


Distant Highway

by write_light



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-10
Updated: 2011-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:01:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_light/pseuds/write_light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Longing – for peace, for companionship, for a brother – all very powerful emotions, none of them on Dean's mind until one of Lucifer's long-forgotten land mines surfaces in Dean's back yard.  Sam has made the Hunt his life, losing Dean in the process, but in the summer of 2030 their paths cross in the bloodstained house of a ten-year-old orphan.  As an ancient darkness takes hold of everyone in reach, Sam and Dean are forced to resurrect the Winchester Brothers in old and new ways. But do they want to?  Not talking for fifteen years hasn't made that question any simpler.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_**FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || MASTERPOST**_  
 **  
Title:** Distant Highway  
 **Author:**[](http://write-light.livejournal.com/profile)[ **write_light**](http://write-light.livejournal.com/)    
 **Artist:** [](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/profile)[**lightthesparks**](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/)    
 **Genre:** (Supernatural) Wincest; FutureFic, 20 years on; Casefic  
 **Rating:** R  
 **Pairing/Characters:** Sam/Dean, OMC (kid), Bobby, Castiel  
 **Warnings:** creepy horror, monsters, death, damaged relationships, angst, longings, and the passing of years  
 **Word Count:** 25,500  
 **Betas:** the wonderful [](http://cherie-morte.livejournal.com/profile)[**cherie_morte**](http://cherie-morte.livejournal.com/)   with assistance from [](http://afg1.livejournal.com/profile)[**afg1**](http://afg1.livejournal.com/)  .

 **Soundtrack:** 11 songs, 56 mins, 86.5MB, @ Megaupload [**HERE**](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PP6H8K0I). Song links in each chapter.

 **Whole-Fic File:** [DOC](http://home.comcast.net/~write_light/DistantHighwayFINAL.doc) || [RTF](http://home.comcast.net/~write_light/DistantHighwayFINAL.rtf) || [PDF](http://home.comcast.net/~write_light/DistantHighwayFINAL.pdf)

 **A/N:** Written for [](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/profile)[**lightthesparks**](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/)  , as part of her fic challenge at the Sam/Dean OTP comm, [](http://loveyoulikesin.livejournal.com/profile)[**loveyoulikesin**](http://loveyoulikesin.livejournal.com/) . Special thanks to [](http://wickedtruth.livejournal.com/profile)[**wickedtruth**](http://wickedtruth.livejournal.com/)  [](http://wickedtruth.dreamwidth.org/) for asking, "What really scares you?" It helped the monster materialize. Further author's notes [**here**](http://write-light.livejournal.com/226947.html).

 **Summary:** Longing – for peace, for companionship, for a brother – all very powerful emotions, none of them on Dean's mind until one of Lucifer's long-forgotten land mines surfaces in Dean's back yard. Sam has made the Hunt his life, losing Dean in the process, but in the summer of 2030 their paths cross in the bloodstained house of a ten-year-old orphan. As an ancient darkness takes hold of everyone in reach, Sam and Dean are forced to resurrect the Winchester Brothers in old and new ways. But do they want to? Not talking for fifteen years hasn't made that question any simpler.

 **Teaser:**

Flickering lightning filled the sky out each window, revealing the rooms behind him, and ahead. The man paused, looking at the beer sweating in his hand, its empty brothers arrayed on the counter.

"Tell me a Winchester story," said the kid.

  


* * *

  


  
NOTE! These links will take you to the LiveJournal posts; continue reading below to remain at AO3.

[ **MASTERPOST**](http://write-light.livejournal.com/228952.html) || **[Introduction](http://write-light.livejournal.com/228649.html)[  
]()** **[How They Ended](http://write-light.livejournal.com/228562.html)** || [ **How It Began**](http://write-light.livejournal.com/228194.html) [  
]()**[How It Ended](http://write-light.livejournal.com/227925.html)** || **[How They Began](http://write-light.livejournal.com/227593.html)** || **[Epilogue](http://write-light.livejournal.com/227342.html)**  
 **[Author's Notes](http://write-light.livejournal.com/226947.html)** || **[Soundtrack](http://write-light.livejournal.com/227203.html)**[  
]() **[Master Art Post](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/68872.html)**

 ****  
[   
]()   



	2. Chapter 2

_**FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 1. Introduction**_  
 **  
Introduction**  


* * *

  
 _Singer Salvage – October 2008_

"No, Sam, I haven't entered all the data yet.  Fresh out of temps," Bobby snapped.  "Can't get good help to stay when I tell 'em my toenails need trimmin' too," he explained, in his usual mood.

"Sam would be happy to help out!" Dean volunteered.

"Dean–"

Bobby shoved a teetering stack of papers, folders, journals, and random clippings across the desk at Sam, who was only _just_ taller than it when he stood up.  

Dean made a show of staying around, helping without helping, as Sam buckled down and began plotting the sightings and reports on a map.  Dean was watching from Bobby's couch, then staring at the ceiling, then snoring.  Sam threw a book at him a half hour later, and he woke with a start.  He scowled at Sam, who had shaved only a few inches off the stack.

"Sure thing, Bobby, I'll get that stuff for you at the store," Dean yelled down the hall to no one, as Sam glowered and punched the keys in frustration.  Dean was going to ditch him, he knew it.

"I'll be back soon enough.  You watch him, Bobby."

The door slammed.

"He went out while you were asleep, Dean," Sam muttered to himself and the stack next to him, but it didn't ease the anger.

***

When Dean pulled back in, the Impala's steady rumble woke two emotions in Sam – resentment and a kind of relief, the way he'd always felt when Dean returned from his time alone. 

The map on the screen was rapidly filling with were-creatures, wendigos, vampire nests, hauntings, and demonic omens (including a particularly dark patch in Wyoming and another near Chicago).  But if there were any patterns, Sam hadn't seen them yet, and his eyes were going foggy despite all the coffee Bobby had brought him.  The stack no longer teetered, but it was only half gone.  The next sheet read "1880: report of vampire in New Orleans."

Sam, unwilling to face Dean, went upstairs to lie down for a while.

***

"Sam?" 

Dean looked around, saw the unfinished stack, and groaned. 

"Bobby?" he asked, hoping for someone to talk to.  The note on the table caught his eye and he groaned again. Bobby had gone out now too, he realized.

Dean settled at the computer and wondered if Bobby would mind a few porn sites in his browser history.  _Might even have a few already_ , he thought, before he could block the image that seared his brain.

The map in front of him was a fortunate distraction – he could trace many of their cases, and the increased activity of the past year as Heaven stepped into matters on Earth.  He zoomed in and scrolled across the country, past a red star over Lawrence – marked with two dates, ten years apart, then a smattering of dots across Missouri, and the denser shadow of tiny flecks that lay over Kentucky, a land rich with lore.  As he headed east, the shadow thinned, and a blank spot appeared, a strangely white spot, a cancer in reverse, but with the same ragged edges.  It wasn't big, but it covered most of Rockcastle County, Kentucky, where the Appalachians started to rise.

"Nothing?"  His own voice in the silence startled him, but he didn't look away. _Nothing to hunt.  Nothing to worry about. That's the place to be._

"BWAHAHAAA!" Sam yelled in his ear, grabbing Dean's shoulders and shaking him.  The empty spot slid out of view as Dean jerked his hand and yelled, genuinely scared that time. 

"Damn it, Sam!  Make a noise."

Sam just laughed, with a broad smile that Dean had loved since the first time Sam, only two, had smiled up at him from his toys.

"You ditched me, jerk.  Did you even remember to get something from the store to make it look believable?"

Dean glossed over this.  "You love this stuff, Sam.  Don't tell me you don't."

"Bobby's out.  You wanna?"  Sam suggested, his voice low for no good reason.

"Where?  He sold the Corvette," Dean replied, suddenly focused.

"There's a TransAm with a nice little back seat.  It's a bit of climb, but he'll never notice us up there."

"You're such a loser.  A TransAm?  Does it have flames across the hood?" Dean said, laughing.

"It does.  And down the side," Sam said, running his fingers down Dean's sides, letting them rest on his belt.

"Yeah okay," Dean said, his voice different, open and inviting. 

* * *

   
 _Brunnen Farm, Rockcastle County, Kentucky – October 25th, 2009_

After summoning Death to a blood-soaked field in Carthage, Missouri, Lucifer wandered the Earth waiting for Sam Winchester to say "yes" and be his final vessel.  But the devil's hands are never idle.  He spent the days before their inevitable encounter in Detroit walking the back roads, thinking of his old friends, the playmates and confidants of his first lonely days after the Fall and before the Cage.  In a lonely farm field in eastern Kentucky, he knelt and touched the soil, gently.  He listened. It was so quiet down there, but he could feel the familiar pain.

"You need to leave my property, son," said the farmer, a slight man who leaned back a bit when Lucifer stood up.

"Royal."  He called the farmer by his true name, one even his wife didn't use. "I will to make your family wealthy, Roy.  Your land will be blessed again as it once was.  All I ask is that you till a small circle here so that this earth can receive its gift."

"I…"

"I'm telling you the truth, Roy – you know that.  All the things you've longed for will be yours."

Roy was impressed by the tone of the tall man's voice, so warm, so clear, and when he spoke of things longed for – Roy's heart filled with all the aches he'd lost count of in his life. 

Lucifer stood waiting in the icy afternoon as Roy drove his tractor in a tight circle, blades cutting into the wet soil. The sun faded and Roy shivered, unaware that the cold was robbing him of strength.  When he was done, the circle was a dark mouth in a snow-dappled field, even more striking from the road that crested the hill and wound away again.

"Thank you, Roy." 

Lucifer ripped Roy's neck from him in gratitude and poured the blood along the outer edge of the circle, the rest gurgling into the ground at the center.  He knelt in the middle, arms sinking elbow-deep into the warm, wet earth, and called to It in their old language.

"Come to me, my old companion, my dearest child, and reclaim your place.  They have not forgotten you here.  _**I**_ have not forgotten you," he added, tenderly.

The blood rushed down through the earth, carried by his desire and his power.  It would take a while now, but he had the Winchesters to deal with first; he could return later when his creation reached the surface. 

It heard him.  Moving up from deep below, through the spaces in the Earth, It came. It responded to his call and clawed Its way out of confinement, feeding on the blood he sent It and the frustration that enriched every drop – Royal's petty desires and his own eons of rage since he'd been cast out of Heaven.  There were centuries of hunger since the thing had been banished under the old hills. So much unfulfilled. So much longing to swallow.  
   


* * *

  
 _Outside Terre Haute, Indiana – August 8th, 2023_

Sam was leaned up against the hood of the Impala, bandaging his left index finger.  A drop of his blood ran down the serpentine belt where it had fallen after he cut himself digging around for a loose nut rattling under the carburetor. 

The storm was closer than ever and seemed to race up on him as he looked between the hasty, inelegant bandaging and the flickering lightning in the storm clouds.  He was tense. He had been even before the pain, as he watched the black clouds roiling over the plains. Lightning played among them, forking to the ground now and then. _Demon-sign._

 _No. It's not._

He knew demons inside-out now and was weary at what his life had become: vigilance and fear and worry, and a small measure of comfort in each … _thing_ … he eliminated.  The ease was gone for good, though, and the fun that Dean had brought.  _Now I'm just killing time._

 _And I cut my hair too short_ , he thought, looking at his reflection in the window as he slammed the hood down before the rain hit.  The lightning flashed again, making him look ghostly in the already shadowy image – old, lonely, _just the way Dad looked_.  He dove inside the car just as the squall line hit, drowning the car and the world around him.  He sat within, mesmerized by the fury of the water against the glass, the way the wind shook the old car, the roar of the thunder like the roar he'd heard down below. 

Alone in the car, one idea kept repeating:  _I haven't thought of Dean since_ ….

He sought the answer – _surely not so long ago_ – not that shamefully long, but 2023 was empty of Dean, and it terrified him at first.  He finally was able to recall the last time, in 2022, nearly seven years after he'd found the Impala and the keys and Dean's unsurprisingly brief letter.  They hadn't even been living together then, but it still felt odd.  A loss and a chain cut free.

He started the car, and the incessant rumble filled half the silence.  The rest Dean had filled with his constant talking, his own deep rumble that layered over the car's and kept Sam calm. 

The squall line passed, and with it some of the pain of forgetting Dean, who _wanted_ to be forgotten.  Sam headed northwest, to see Bobby.

* * *

  
 _Red Hill, Kentucky – July 23rd, 2030  
_  
"Tell me a story…"  
   
"It's just a thunderboomer.  It'll pass.  You get to sleep."  He turned the light out.  
   
"Tell me a Winchester story."  
   
Flickering light filled the sky between the trees, revealing the rooms behind him, and ahead.  The man paused, looking at the beer sweating in his hand, its empty brothers arrayed on the counter.

"Okay, sport, a story.  Um…" he paused to think as he walked back into the bedroom.  He plopped down on the bed, bouncing the kid, who giggled despite the roll of thunder that hummed in the distance.  
   
"That sound you hear now?  Sometimes you hear it on quiet nights too. When there's not a cloud in the sky." He raised an eyebrow for effect.  "But you don't let it scare you.  You know why? That's the rumble of the Impala passing by in the night, keeping us all safe.  Run to the door, throw it open if you want, but there's no Sam, no Dean, just an empty street."  
   
"Ugh, that is _so_ _corny_!"  
   
"You didn't like that, huh?" said the man, his voice deep and husky with the strain of covering up emotions he'd known would awaken.  
   
"I like all the stories, Mr. S.  Just… it's not very scary," the kid reasoned.  
   
"You don't want the scary stories. They'll keep you awake."  
   
"The ones that make you wake up screaming – tell me one of those!" he asked eagerly as the lightning flashed.  
   
"NO!" the man yelled, louder than the roar that shook the cabin.

The kid shrank into the bed, the thin sheet over him, wide eyes waiting.  
   
"You get to sleep," the man repeated, gently this time, and ducked out.  
   
He popped the beer cap on the edge of the kitchen counter without even thinking and kicked his way out onto the porch, hoping lightning would strike him down soon.  _Good way to go_.  
 

  
[ ** _Don't Follow            Alice In Chains_**](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D6ZDKPYJ)  
[ ** _The Way                Bonnie "Prince" Billy  
_**](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)[ ** _  
_**](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *


	3. FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 2. How They Ended

_  
**FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 2. How They Ended**   
_   
**  
How They Ended**   
[   
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
  
  


  
_Red Hill, Kentucky – July 23rd, 2030_   
_  
Good time to go, indeed. This is as good as it gets for me._

Dean stepped out into the rage of the storm.  The screen slammed once behind him, then held.  He'd fired up the hydraulic arm so that it wouldn't bang endlessly as TJ ran in and out, but now it fell like a scalpel, cutting him free from the world behind him and the memories of Sam that his bedtime stories seemed to stir up more each night.

He drank beer to avoid drinking worse.  His one visit to a doctor in the last ten years had led to an unpleasant discussion of his liver's declining condition and from there to his increasingly severe bouts of depression.

He dropped off the bottom stair and his boot sank into the mud at the bottom of the puddle there. _More gravel tomorrow_ , he thought, lifting his boot to shake it off.  He raised his beer to the sky, rain pelting his face. 

"Come to get me?" he yelled to the clouds flashing overhead.  They looked vaguely like demon clouds, but he knew he was safe and starting to wish he wasn't. _I've seen the best years. Nothing to do but wait._

***  
Sam hated storms, and he was worse at ten than at eight or even five.  Somewhere along the way, the childlike wonder had given way to fear, then to dislike and anger.  He seemed to take them personally, and that didn't change until late in high school.  John didn’t much care, except that Sam got the car wet getting in and out and tracked mud everywhere.

***  
Lightning played across the Kentucky foothills, then struck so close it blinded Dean, washing out the memories of Sam.  He closed his eyes and saw only an afterimage of tree branches whipping in the wind as the cold pinkish light flickered through his lids.  
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _Red Hill, Kentucky  – May 5th, 2025_

"You won't find a better property this close in – private drive, workshop, garage, two bedrooms, a pond down the hill, plenty of shade trees."

"Those neighbors seemed awfully close.  I like my privacy."

"The Coffeys won't bother you.  They're the right sort.  Deeply rooted in the area and not likely to cause trouble," said the agent, confident in her assessment.

"Well, good then," Dean replied, only somewhat comforted.

"Shall we look at the master suite?"

Dean had already decided he would take the place.  The money he'd made at his last two jobs was more than enough to allow a no-questions-asked down payment.

"About the credit check…"

"Passed with flying colors, Mr. Samuelson.  May I call you Hector?" she asked.

"Sure, why not?" Dean said, falsely jovial.

"I've never seen someone whose credit scores were all in the 800s, I have to say.  We ran it twice to be sure."

"I'm very frugal."

"As for the need for privacy, we can do the deal with a minimum of fuss and public scrutiny.  I have a few friends at the recorder's office."

"I appreciate that," Dean said with exceptional warmth, "and I'll take it," he added, letting the charm flow as he backed her toward the door.

"You will? You – well, you can move in today, if you like.  Unless you want to wait for your furniture to arrive," she said, uncertain of how she'd sold the place so quickly.

"No, there's nothing com– That won't be necessary.  I like the furnishings."

"Well then, I'll take the papers by the bank tomorrow and we can close anytime before Friday."

"Thank you very much," he said as he lead her out on to the porch; he waved vigorously until she was out of sight.

***

Dean woke the next morning in the middle of the most monster-free part of the country he'd ever known.  He'd found it again after years of looking; here he could stop and rest. _Settle._ He took his cup of coffee outside and watched the trees sway in a sudden breeze that blew up the hill from the pond, just visible from his back porch.

When he had to kill a witna in Texas, ten years back, he'd thought of Sam's map with the empty spot for the first time in a long while and it panicked him.  His dream had slipped, gone askew, and he was uncomfortable for weeks, as if he had a rock in his boot, until he found a library with a decent folklore collection.   He made his own map over the years and it revealed roughly the same small empty spot, centered near Red Hill. 

Not a single tale talked about that place; not one reason existed to explain why it was clear of all the bad things that roamed the world.  Ghosts wandered the length and breadth of the state, but not there – no werewolves, no plagues, no missing children.  Not a single demonic omen had ever been recorded there even in the final days before their battle at Stull Cemetery – and not one murder since 2009. 

That spot had been Dean's goal, a calm center in the hurricane that tore their life apart more each year. Sam had taken most of the burden from him – not willingly at first, but they'd spoken, and Sam wanted it.  He wanted to hunt everything.  Dean wanted to pull back. Dean finally walked out after so many years, so much suffering and untruth and pain – and now he could forget about bringing death to those around him.

Here, he could just drink his coffee and watch the sun shine down on his valley, a fresh breeze wafting up the slope to his face.  _This is my land, my house, my hill, my pond. Finally free.  And a place I can fish._

"BANG BANG!" came a loud voice, and a little kid in an oversized cowboy hat backed hurriedly around the corner of the porch, crouching to hide, oblivious to Dean leaning on the post just ten feet behind him.

Seconds later, as Dean's "HEY!" formed in his mouth, the pursuer came running past the end of the house, gun drawn on his quarry.  A real gun, small caliber from the look of it, Dean judged.  The kid holding it was all of five, dark hair grown rampant and eyes wide with excitement and shock.

"HEY!" Dean barked.

The kid froze, gun raised and wavering in one hand.  His friend, the quarry, turned and backed into the wall of the house in shock when Dean yelled.

"Who are you?  This place is empty," said the kid with the gun.

"Put that down," Dean said fiercely, and it worked.

***

"I’m sorry, really.  He knows not to play with Charley's guns," the woman replied weakly to Dean's cautionary warnings.

"Mommy – don’t tell Daddy! Please."

"TJ, go to your room.  We'll talk later.  I'm sorry," she said, returning her attention briefly to Dean.  "What did you say your name was again?"

"Samuelson, just moved in next door.  Yesterday.  Look, I know I scared the kid, but he can't be running around with a gun, loaded or not."

"You bought the house next door?" she asked.   She leaned out, looked at the trees that obscured his house from her view, and seemed puzzled.  "Well, you have a good day then.  Won't happen again."

The door was shut before Dean could speak again.

A handpainted sign swung back and forth on the door on its chain, proclaiming "The COFFEYS" in a cloying script. 

"Neighbors," Dean muttered.  "Never will get used to them."  
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _Champlain, New York - 2013_

The hunts grew farther and farther apart, Dean functioning as efficiently as ever when it came to killing, but without equilibrium now, increasingly detached and alone, even with Sam there.  Sam kept finding old demons and new ones, and remnants of Purgatory's horrors that still roamed the world.  He was growing impatient with the rate they took on new cases.

"Sam… are you trying to prove something to me?  That you have an endless grudge against Lucifer, maybe?"

Sam didn't respond, but his mouth twisted as he packed the weapons into his bag.  "I have things to take care of."

He zipped up the duffel and left for his first solo hunt in years.

***

 _Waconia, Minnesota - 2014_

"Because Lucifer's gone now, you know," Dean added the next time the same argument came up.  It was unnecessary, but he didn't hold it back.

"I have a responsibility for what I did.  I said ' _Yes_ ,' Dean.  My time in the cage was nothing compared to what's happened up here because of me."

"Oh, the endless guilt of Sam Winchester!  You were forgiven, you remember that?  By Heaven, no less."

Sam held the phone away from his ear for a moment, eyes closed.  Eventually he heard Dean fade out.

"Where are you now?" Sam asked, avoiding the topic yet again.

"Got a place in Topeka.  Just a rental."

"You coming or not?"

Dean avoided the reality that night as well, and on many, many others, that his own brother was one person Dean couldn't save, or even enjoy being with. He could barely face another hunt. 

***  
 _  
El Dorado, Texas - 2015_

"I'm sorry, Sam," Dean said to the motel room walls in a tiny hole of a Texas town.  "I turned you into something I never intended you to be.  Right lesson, wrong time?  Wrong lesson?  What _did_ I teach you?"

The whiskey was there even when Sam wasn't, soothing him, then eating at him when the world turned dark.  
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _Campos Verdes, New Mexico – May 11th, 2015_

"I need peace, Sam.  Get away from all this death.  Find a place without a horror waiting in every doorway," Dean tried to explain.

It was, almost word for word, something Sam had overheard John say to Bobby once, when Sam was still very young.  It only reinforced his fear of where their lives had brought the two of them. 

"You know why I keep hunting, Dean.  We've been over this.  Five years since Hell hasn't changed anything."

"Redemption."

"Something like that."

"Sam Winchester saves the world."

"Don't." 

Sam fell silent and Dean let it rest for a moment. 

"That's not what scares me, Sam.  I know you're here for your own reasons, not for me."

"No, Dean, I – " Sam began, trying to fix all the mistakes in Dean's beliefs.

"I haven't been right since you opened the door and showed me Samuel and the rest of them.  And it wasn't _him_ – I knew what it meant to see him there, and that gave me a good old-fashioned shiver.  Things were happening around us again, and I can deal with weird pretty well."  He paused, judging Sam's face, then went on as best he could.   "But the rest of them, the other Campbells… Knowing there's always been a line of them fighting monsters… That–"  He stopped, unable to speak for a second.  "That didn’t make me proud, it killed me."

"I know, Dean."

"You _know_?" he asked, incredulous and a little insulted.

"I saw how you looked. I got it, soul or no soul.  I didn't much care at the time, but I knew what I was seeing."

"It wasn't just me and you, or even Mom and Dad, or our grandparents – it was _forever._   There was no hope – no other life," Dean rushed it all out, his voice almost pleading. 

"And yet you kept going," Sam said, an old bandage for an old wound.  It was no use now.

"I kept going because you weren't _right_ – I had to make you right.  But that moment pushed me – one little notch toward wanting to give it up, get out, be free…."

His voice died with the effort it took to say all that to Sam, and the stoic expression Sam had adopted didn't help.  It was as close as he got to goodbye.  
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _Needles, California - May 14th, 2015_

Sam arrived for breakfast expecting Dean to be there.  The Impala was parked in front of the motel office where they'd left it when they returned from the canyon creek where they'd dispatched a wailing _llorona_ spirit who cried out for the young brothers she'd drowned.

Sam walked past the car, into the Clover Coffee Shop that shared space with the motel, and sat in the third booth.  He was momentarily confused –  the booth was empty.  It was quiet too; he didn't have to hear a complaint about his long shower and the booth didn't smell like scorched coffee or the best buttermilk pancakes on Route 40. And it didn't smell like week-old flannel and Impala seats either, the true mark of Dean Winchester.

"He hasn't been gone long," Marilee said hopefully.  She'd given up flirting with them almost the second day they were in for coffee, but she still fancied Dean. 

"Uh… where'd he go to?  Did he say?" Sam asked, confused.

"Wrote a note, put it on that boat of a car, headed off toward the bridge."

***

  
_  
Sam,_

 _Take care of her.  She loves me, but she'll protect you almost as well as I used to – I asked her to.  Don't get yourself killed, huh?  And don't come looking for me.  I'll be fine._

 _Your brother,  
Dean  
_

  
__

__Sam looked down the street but couldn't see Dean anywhere.  The keys were in the ignition; the door on the driver's side unlocked with the quick jiggle that only he and Dean knew.  He stared, at the cafe, where Marilee looked at him from the door with concern, then down the road again for nearly five minutes.  The blood from his bitten lip didn't even register as it spread over his tongue.  
[  
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* * *

  
 _Singer Salvage – Spring 2017_

"He's not building a life of his own."

"You don't know that," Bobby said sympathetically.

"Not for lack of looking.  He changed names so many times, hell, he might even have a credit card in his real name and I never thought to look."

"I did.  Did you know there are three Dean Winchesters in this country?  –They're not him," Bobby added, when he saw Sam's eyes flick up.

"Thanks," Sam said with sincere gratitude.

Bobby looked at Sam, his hair a bit shorter but still unfashionably long and graying in odd ways.  He was gaunt.

"Love doesn't end, Sam. It gets thinner until it's hard to see; it gets lost easy.  But it never goes away.  Do you think I stopped loving my wife because she's dead?"

Sam was unsure how to counter that.  "This is a new kind of pain," he said.

"Everyone thinks that."

Bobby tousled his hair like he was ten again and Sam swatted him away, annoyed to be the little kid forever.

"This isn't what you expected, Sam, but life does that to you.  I expected to grow old with Karen.  Instead, I watched her die, by my hand, and I became a hunter."  He stopped for a minute, straightening a set of books on his desk while he composed himself.  "You two have been through so much, and somehow _you_ just aren't willing to give it up.  But Dean _did_.  Let him go, son."

***

No destiny breathed hot on his neck; even Castiel didn't come around much anymore. No Lucifer on his back and no brother telling him what to do or what not to do meant he could hunt the things they'd helped into the world and drive them back out.  There was real freedom with Dean gone.

 _Freedom is a craphole._ Sam remembered the things he'd said to Dean when his soul was missing, and when they were in Heaven, and long ago when the siren brought unpleasant truths to the surface.  Dean was the weaker one in some ways, but hadn't he found a way to leave hunting and leave his brother?

"Why didn't I help you, Dean?  Why didn't I see it?" he mumbled.  _I'm such a stupid fuckup.  I hope you do better on your own.  If you come back, I'll take care of you for once._

Dean _was_ the weaker one, Sam concluded some years later, not with relief or anger, not the way he'd meant it back when they'd fought, a lifetime before.  Giving up hunting had taken real courage.  Walking away from family had taken something else.  But it was still weakness, in Sam's mind.  He took some comfort in that.  
[  
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* * *

  
 _December 25th, 2020_

When Dean called Sam at Christmas, the Impala was the first thing he asked about, as usual. 

"You were right, Dean.  She did save my life when the cops were chasing me outside of Portland.  She died, ran off the road into the bushes, completely dark.  I never would have outrun them."

"You didn't hurt her!"

"No, it's just… she's old and it's getting harder to fix her up."

Dean was silent at the news.

"Are you in Texas, Dean?"

"Sam…"

"Bobby's worried."

"The hell he is.  I told him the same thing – don't come looking for me.  And turn off the trace," he said after a few seconds of silence.

Sam flicked it off silently, shrugging as Bobby mimed his disapproval with his cane. 

"You're not going to be found, are you?"

"No.  Take care of Bobby.  Tell him to stop waving his cane around or he'll fall over and break his hip.  Oh, not even a laugh, Sam?"

"Dean, I need your help with a –"

"No, Sam.  I don't hunt.  I have a life that's my own, not yours, not Dad's, not Lisa's – and not some archangel's.  Just my own.  Me."

"Dean –"

"You keep doing what you need to do.  I'm all right."

"'Bye, Dean."

The phone went crackly, interference from a storm most likely, and they spoke again only after another decade had passed.  
[  
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* * *

  
 _Red Hill, Kentucky – August 17th, 2030_

When Dean checked in on him, TJ was still awake.

"Tell me – "

"A Sam & Dean story, yeah, I know."

Dean paused, censoring the stories as he sifted through them. 

"Okay, I've got a story with fairies or one with a ghost ship or one with witches."

"Monsters!  Monsters and fairies and witches and kids!" 

"That's not a choice."  _Thank God._

TJ looked at Dean, from whom he'd copied the lift of one eyebrow.  Shocked by this reflection of himself, Dean could think only of a young boy he'd rescued from the depths of a lake, so he told that story. The tale unfolded, places and names carefully changed where necessary, but Sam and Dean remained the same, just a bit cleaned up, as always.  

Dean went to bed that night thinking of how he'd saved a kid named Ben once, twice even – a kid he'd called 'son.'

 _Do I get to try again?_

 

  
[   
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_These Days                Jackson Browne_   
**   
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[   
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**Sky Blue And Black               Jackson Browne**   
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* * *

  



	4. FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 3. How It Began

_**FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 3. How It Began** _   
**  
How It Began** [   
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
  


  
_Red Hill, Kentucky – June, 2029  
_  
Dean had had a lot of time to get used to having a kid around. TJ came over nearly every day and would hang around Dean's after school, and on weekends, sometimes with his friends but mostly alone.  Every year TJ spent more time with him, learning how to fix cars and trucks, a handful of basic self-defense moves, even a few lessons on gun maintenance.  Dean refused to let him shoot until he learned how to clean and rebuild the gun.

  
Dean didn't beg to be left alone often, because when he talked, the kid listened.  He was like Sam at that age, a sponge for information and stories.  _Like Sam but normal_ , he thought once, and flushed hot with shame. 

One of their recent conversations had been succinct:

"My folks aren't talking.  There's a lot of crying.  Dad too."

Dean gave him an odd look. "What do you do when they fight?"

"Come over here.  It's sort of normal over here."

"Thanks."  _I think._

***

Dean drove home in his truck, looking at the fields tucked among the hills – so many shades of green he'd never seen out in Texas.  The field at Brunnen Farms was freshly tilled, as it often was, richly chocolate loam in the center, fading out to the tan of rock and limestone that marked every other struggling farm.  It caught Dean's eye as he raced around the curve and hurried home to be there when TJ arrived.  
   
 _What's he planting now?_ Dean thought, no longer surprised at the small concerns of life that had nothing to do with hellfire and lost souls and more to do with watching over a troubled kid and wondering how Brunnen Farm stayed in business.  _He's tilling that field all the damn time, even with crops in it.  What the hell is he growing besides LeeAnn's scallions?_

* * *

  
 _November 11th, 2029_

Sunday was a big day at TJ's house.  Charley, his father, had been invited to the Outlook, a place the locals treasured as "theirs," not given over to the tourist trade and occasional lost highway travelers like the other two bars in town were.  Charley didn't know what the occasion was, but he suspected it was going to be his induction into the local Lions or Rotary or some such. He longed to be a bigger man in the town; so far, his fishing equipment and bait shop was a hobby more than a business. He ignored his wife Lena's concerns, as he often did.

That night, his breath showing in the icy wind as approached the neon glare over the Outlook's door, he wanted more than ever to be a real local.  As he stepped inside, all eyes were on him, and he hesitated, feeling for a second just as excluded as he always did. 

"Jesus, Charley, shut the door before we freeze!" yelled Cleve jokingly from a table near the back, waving him over with a nod of his head.

Charley joined the table and ignored the stares of the others as he downed drink after drink.  The bar had cleared by around 9 pm, but he hardly noticed, so welcome was the camaraderie of the men of the town.

"Let's go upstairs, Charley.  We have a proposition to make you and Lena."

What happened upstairs had happened to all of them, and it made sense.  Charley expected a secret handshake, or keys to the private clubhouse – mundane longings for the appearances of success.  He was not pleased to find his arms pinned and a handful of moist greyish soil forced into his mouth. 

There was a beat to it, a rhythm inside, and a wail over top of it all that might have been his own.

***

Charley had a momentous evening, but he said nothing of it over breakfast – not to his wife, nor to TJ – he just smiled broadly at them and at his plate and his glass of orange juice.  He felt his new life running through him; all the painful longing he'd had was gone, and he was safe.  He always would be, now.  He drank a lot, to get the taste out of his mouth, but it never really seemed to go away completely.

"What are you grinning about, Char?"

"I just feel better now.  Like I don't have a care.  Oh, and I saw Vicky downtown.  She said you were invited to the Ladies Auxiliary meeting tomorrow."

"I heard that from LeeAnn.  Will I get in, do you think?"

"She didn't say that, hon; don't get all excited.  But yeah – I think you'll be part of something bigger very soon."

He shared the laugh with her, and the anticipation too, he thought, but she kept her fears well hidden.    
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _November 26th, 2029_

TJ stayed late, helping Dean work on his truck and enjoying the one adult in his life who was able to pay attention to him and seemed to want him around.  Around seven p.m., long after dark, Dean noticed the time and walked TJ back home.

"Mr. Coffey, TJ's been with –"

"Do I have to repeat myself?  Do not let him hang around – send him home.  TJ is _not_ your problem, Hector, and I won't have you spoiling him.  We take care of our own."

"Char!" his wife interrupted before Dean could respond.

"You never mind.  He gets this from you," Charley snapped at her.

"He was helping me fix my truck," Dean tried to explain.

"TJ, get to your room and finish your homework.  You can have dinner after that."

TJ slipped into the house with a small "Sorry, Mr. S" and the door slammed.

The hand-painted sign that should have swung back and forth on the door was instead nailed into place, perfectly straight and true.   
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _December 8th, 2029_

"Where you been, kiddo?" Dean asked when TJ knocked on the door, after a week without a single visit. "I was gettin' a little worried."

"Oh, I said something to my Dad about all your bottles in the kitchen and they wouldn't let me come over any more.  Said you were a bad influence."

"Yeah?  Sorry," Dean said as he looked at the three new cases of beer he'd just bought for that week. "So why now?" he asked.

"They're gone."

"Well, you can hang out with me until they get back."

***

The next day, TJ was in a strange mood that Dean couldn't identify.  He just sat on the stool outside the shed and watched as Dean tuned the engine on the truck.  He never offered to help, something he almost always had before.  He didn't even ask for any of Dean's bottomless supply of holiday snacks, a sugary pleasure forbidden in the Coffey household. 

"You okay?" Dean asked, after passing even his own "just don't ask about it" time limit.

"I am," TJ said stiffly.  He sat on the picnic table now, feet on the bench, watching Dean tinker with the car in the pale morning sun.

"A bit early to be over."

"Nah."

Dean raised an eyebrow.  The kid was a little too much like him.

"Is it a holiday?"

"No, I just didn't go to school today."

"Well, come on, I'll take you in."

TJ looked crushed.

"Or you could stay here and learn some more about how engines work," Dean offered.

"Okay!" 

TJ hopped off the table and raced over to the truck, visibly relieved.

***

TJ went home briefly around dinnertime but turned up again in the evening and stuck close.  Dean finally chased him off, but he seemed genuinely unwilling to go.

"You get home before your folks worry.  Your dad's got his own stuff to teach you, you know.  Enjoy your family, kiddo."

TJ was oddly silent and looked everywhere but at Dean, then left.

Dean went outside at ten to watch the stars and was startled when he heard TJ's teeth chattering on the porch swing. 

"Hey, buddy," he said softly, rustling TJ with a gentle hand on the shoulder.

"Let me stay, Mr. S!" were the first words out of his mouth.

"Okay, okay, come learn something if you're gonna be in trouble."

Dean put his warm coat around TJ and they lay side by side at the edge of the deck, a full view of the sky above them, rich with stars.

"Sam and Dean's dad was named John.  He taught Dean all about the constellations."

"I thought he was a hunter and they lost him."

"This is before.  Way before they lost him, when they were little.  Now that one – do you see the three stars in a line?"

"Yeah?"

***

"That's the Hunter," John said quietly.

John lay across the hood with a ten-year-old Dean on his chest, both looking up at the stars.  The Impala was warm underneath them and they stayed there till it cooled.  Sam dozed in the back seat.

The first thing Dean noticed was Orion's belt and his bow.  He liked it. It made him feel safe to see a hunter over him.  When John got too preoccupied with the things he hunted, or took off for a week, Dean would take Sam out where they could see the sky and try to teach him what he could remember.

***

"Where did their Dad go?"

"He had to leave sometimes.  To find the man that hurt their mother."

"Did he die?"

"Yeah, eventually."

"How?"

Dean moved from the Hunter across the Bull to another constellation, guiding TJ's arm with his own arm, finger sweeping across the vastness of the sky.

"Do you see that one, the W?"

"It looks like an M."

"Sam saw that before he saw the Hunter; the first thing _he_ noticed was a big W.  Dean didn't think the story of the W was all that great – something about a queen who tried to overthrow the gods and got stuck up in Heaven as a warning.  Which is pretty fuc–  _funny_ , if you think about it.  Anyway, Dean tried to get Sam's attention onto the cooler stuff, the stuff he knew better, but Sam liked the 'W'.  It was his.  It was them.  They were Winchesters and that was their name, he said."

"It looks like an M," TJ repeated.

"Well turn around, dummy!"  Dean chuckled, and it released some of the tightness in his chest.  TJ craned his neck as far as he could without actually turning. 

"Oh, I see it," he said, his voice enthused for the first time that day.

"Hunters have a way to show they've been through a place, checked it out.  Sam and Dean used that as their mark, to show they'd been somewhere.  Five little points in a W."

They were silent for a while under the sky, the crisp, cold air of winter bringing the stars lower than ever.

"But you know what?  It's almost ten-thirty, way past your bedtime and your folks'll be furious.  Let me take you –"

"They won't worry.  They're gone," TJ interrupted.

"Again? Or still?  And left you home alone? Where'd they go?"

"Away."  TJ paused and looked at Dean.  "Mom didn't talk to me all week, she just kept trying to write a letter, and Dad was always at the bar with his friends.  He said it was business.  And then they said they felt sick, and they were gone when I got home from school Monday."

" _Three days ago?_ " Dean asked, sitting up.  "Did they leave a note? Do you have their number to call?"  He was worried now – Charley was driven when it came to his business, and Lena could have her moments of flakiness, but they were homebodies.

"Take me over there," he said to TJ.

"No.  It's messy.  There was blood."

Dean was on his feet in a second, pulse racing, eyes staring through the gloom toward the Coffey's house.

"You go inside and lock the doors.  Both doors."

"No, just let them be gone."

There was no particular guilt or fear in the small voice, and Dean couldn't quite take that. 

***

Stop number one was his own basement.  Dean pushed aside the cardboard boxes and the tarp he'd laid over the freezer. He unlocked it in a second but it stuck, hitching and slamming back down as violently as he'd flung it open.  He tried again, and it screeched, the hinge-rust not pleased to be disturbed after five long years of disuse.

Below him, a handgun with two full clips, his sawed-off shotgun, silver knives and bullets, and a vial of water under a crucifix lay waiting.  The rock salt sat in the basement corner, alone, mostly one large lump now in the damp.  Dean cursed under his breath as he loaded the gun.  The salt didn't cross his mind. 

"Lock the doors when I leave. Open only when I get back."

TJ obeyed.

***

Dean picked the back door lock of the Coffeys' house and opened it slowly, inhaling a rank mildew smell he'd always assumed was his neighbors' leaky basement.  The odor filled the hall, along with the smell of old blood, something he'd left behind fifteen years earlier. 

His flashlight beam reflected off the refrigerator, throwing light across dark splatters and a black smear across the linoleum.  His heart sank. 

 _This doesn’t happen here.  There are no murders in Red Hill._

He made his way along the hall from the kitchen to the open basement door, where a black threadlike fungus had climbed halfway up the basement walls in places.  Blood had dripped from the edge of the living room all the way out into the hall and joined a second trail from the bathroom, both leading to the front door.

Dean opened the door slowly, and the family's sign scraped as it swung, no longer attached properly.  He ran his light around the doorframe but saw no further blood.

"What are you doing here?" came a woman's voice from behind him.  He spun around to find LeeAnn McCormack in the hall, a plastic bag and some spray bottles in hand.  He reached for his gun but kept it hidden.

"I came to see if Charley wanted to go fishing," Dean lied.  "The back door was unlocked.  Not like him."

"He and Lena left a few days ago for a sister-city convention.  They're our ambassadors."

"Without TJ?"

"TJ will be protected.  They trust him to take care of himself, and if they're gone longer, they told us to take him in until they return.  Where is TJ?"

LeeAnn was the sweetest, most determined hugger in town, but to see that persona in this situation made Dean grip his gun firmly.

"Haven't seen him," Dean lied outright, smiling.

"He'll turn up.  Little tykes always do.  Probably off having an adventure with one of his little friends," she prattled, staring around at the blood.  "Looks like something wild got in here and ate their cat."

"They had a cat?"

"I'm almost positive they did," she replied quickly, looking him in the eye.

Dean had his gun cocked and ready now, but LeeAnn maintained her smile and seemed to be more interested in cleaning up the mess than in explaining why she was there in the first place.  Dean was still there for some reason too, getting in the way of her scrubby sponge, and she conveyed that with her expression.

"I'll see you around, LeeAnn," Dean said as calmly as he could, replacing the gun under his belt and covering it with his coat.

"We open the cafe at 6:00 a.m. every day" she said cheerily, as she rubbed at the dried blood on the edge of the counter.  "Stop by tomorrow and I'll treat you to a piece of our Mud Pie."

Dean backed away from her out the rear door, where he stopped and checked the doorframe for marks, a reflex.  He pulled a pocketknife and made a small constellation of indentations, invisible and meaningless to almost everyone but the one man who had seen that "W" first.

***

 _This isn't happening. It can't be. And what the hell was wrong with LeeAnn? She's never that Stepford-y when she serves me lunch. Why did I mark that house?  I'm not hunting, not in my own town.  My goddamned snake-filled paradise.  TJ-_ and here his body tightened up nervously and he spoke out loud, "if your folks aren't back when they said they would be…"

He ran for home.  
[  
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* * *

  
 _Brunnen Farm – New Year's Day, 2030_

The field was plowed, fertilized, rich with blood, and Lucifer's creation grew stronger in every way.  Two new people had become members – Carl Cassidy and his daughter Shanna.  They were under the town's protection now and safe, forever.   For this year, they would receive favors and learn the ways of the members and the true town. 

Below the soil, Charley Coffey was disintegrating slowly, his blood and soul a rich feast, a rush of longing and pain and hopes lost, while his wife lay next to him, dying in a different way.  The threads were running through her body, feeding slowly on her desires: for life, for air, for movement, for her son TJ, and for her other son, given away and hidden.

"Lena, you had another child?"

The voice, Lena thought, was of an old woman, kindly, grandmotherly in affection, scented with mace and cardamom from the cookies she was putting on the table.  Lena turned, and saw the table, the cookies, and the sweetest old woman ever.

"Are you the protector?"

"I am, but you need to sit and eat a cookie first, then tell me all about this child of yours.  This was before TJ?"

"We sent him away.  I saw how people in town changed, and then LeeAnn wasn't LeeAnn and now Charley… –"

"Calm, dear.  Eat another one.  Tell me about the boy."

"He's gone.  No one knew, not even Charley.  I hid it all and went to my sister's in Paducah.  The adoption people took him, and I came home."

"Just like that?" the old woman asked, her voice slippery and soothing.

"What will happen to TJ?" 

"What do you mean, my dear?  He'll be fine.  I'll look after him, bring him in soon."

The thread-like mass grew through Lena's brain, taking her longing for her son into itself and extinguishing her, thought by thought, soul and all from the world.  Above ground, the sun shone weakly on the fresh-plowed field; below the soil, Lucifer's creation spread in all directions, black threads through the soil deep below Red Hill.   
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _January 6th, 2030_

"Tell me a story," TJ said, looking expectantly at Dean.  He was on a cot in Dean's one spare room, where Dean had insisted he remain until things were settled, a guest room for a man who wanted no guests.

"A story? Go to sleep. The End."

The kid rolled his eyes.  "A real story." 

"Aren't you getting a little old for this?"

"So tell me a ten-year-old's story."

"Um…"

Dean sighed and scratched the back of his head, looking around the room for anything that might prompt a Grimm fairy tale up from his unconscious.

"A fairy tale, then.  Once upon a time –"

TJ sighed dramatically.

"No, you'll like this one," Dean said, pacing the room as his excitement grew.  "It's about a car, a black car that prowls the highways, and the men who ride in it.  The Winchester Brothers."

TJ waited expectantly, quiet now.  This sounded different, and Hector's face was more alive with each word he spoke.

"Their names are Sam and Dean, and they hunt the dark things in the world and kill them.  No one stands a chance against them."  _Yeah, so I'm embellishing_ , Dean hushed his conscience.  _Not going to give him the real story.  
_  
It was the first of many tales that helped TJ sleep.  
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _February 2030_

Days turned into weeks; the police investigated and said nothing.  The newspaper reported the Coffey's tragic murder in an alley near the sister-city convention.  But no one asked about TJ.  That didn't seem to bother TJ at all.

"It bothers _me_ ," Dean said, reading over the letter from the County Child Services Office as they waited for breakfast at LeeAnn's.

As no one else had stepped forward, Dean had volunteered to be legal guardian, but TJ couldn't leave town, the letter said, and he'd be placed with a foster family, "soon, when an appropriate family that can provide guardianship is found.  Until such time, the minor is to remain a ward of his current guardian."

"Which is you," TJ stated with great pleasure.  "What's the problem?"

"Your parents –" he said, stopping himself.  They'd talked about it, but he didn't want to keep saying "killed". 

"I know others who left town," TJ volunteered.  "Sometimes whole families, sometimes just one or two, mostly young people.  They say they're moving to the big city to find work, or a better life."

"How many, TJ?"

"I don't know.  Can I just stay with you?  Can you adopt me or something?"

"I –"

Dean's brain provided no answer for that, and his mouth had nothing ready in the pinch.

"She never brings the food out herself," TJ said under his breath as LeeAnn approached.

"What _are_ you two whispering about over here?" she interrupted, setting down TJ's pancakes and Dean's steak and egg omelet.  "Scallions?" 

Dean stared blankly, never a big fan of LeeAnn's claustrophobia-inducing cheerfulness and now even less comfortable around her.  TJ glanced warily up at her.  

"For the omelet?" she clarified.  "Fresh from Roy Jr. up at the farm."

"Yeah sure," Dean said, as she finally made sense. "Love some."

When she'd left, TJ leaned over and whispered, "She's creepy."

"And I've seen creepy. Good call."  
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _May 4th, 2030_

Dean played his music loud, but TJ didn't mind.  It was exciting music, a style he'd never really heard before.  Not what his parents listened to, certainly.

"That's old," he said of one particular song he thought he recognized.

"Thanks," Dean muttered, distracted by the map of his monster-less island of happiness.

"Like sixty years old," TJ commented again, looking at the date on the back cover of the disc.

"Yeah, I know," Dean said, just a bit louder.

"When were you born?"

"1979," Dean muttered, distracted by the old lure of mysterious death. _Murder? Abduction?_

"It's older than _you_!" the kid burst out, calculating fast.  "You're like a history lesson."

"I get it already!" Dean said, the nerve struck.

"How do you like music that old?"

"Dad played it a lot while we were growing up."

"Can I see one of those cassette things?" 

"No way to play those anymore," Dean moped, making a small red circle on the map, around Red Hill.  _What would you take to a desert island, Dean?  I'd take Zeppelin, AC/DC, and a cassette player.  No kids, and no monsters.  Fuck._

"How old are Sam and Dean?" TJ asked.

"Oh, they don’t really age.  They just kind of go on forever.  That's the idea – that's why you're always safe."

"They're not magical," TJ said, with great certainty and logic.

"No, not exactly.  More like...legendary.  Look, kiddo, it's late.  Time for bed."

"Aw, but –"

"No.  March."

"I can't sleep with the music so loud."

"Sure you can.  I fell asleep in the car to this, you can fall asleep on that very comfortable new bed I bought you.  And no reading under the blankets!" Dean called to him as he vanished into his room.

"O- _kay,_ " TJ yelled back.  

Dean smirked, then returned to his map, and added a red mark for TJ's house, his half-smile fading quickly.  There were footprints on his beach.

***

When he looked up fifteen minutes later, TJ was leaning around the doorframe, watching him, waiting.

"Sorry, I got distracted, kiddo."

He chased TJ into bed and tucked the blanket around him.

"Tell me a story about Sam."

"Uh, okay," Dean said, his voice uncertain for a moment; he focused on his best memories.

"This is Sam Winchester's terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day.  It started with a cursed rabbit's foot…."

Dean reveled in the lightness of the memory, the fun of those days even as his deal ran out, the secret smile he had every time bad luck hit Sam in more and more hilarious ways.  He went on for nearly an hour, the greater part of which TJ stayed awake for, laughing at the spilled drinks and the lost shoe and not at the terror of dying that Dean kept out of sight at the edges of his story. 

TJ fell asleep at last when Dean was telling of his double cross of Bela, the mysterious master thief who was no match for him.

"Dad's boxes were closed for a reason.  Some things just shouldn't be dug up again," he finished, looking down at TJ, one arm on his blanket, one hanging down the side of the bed as he slept. 

"Night, kiddo."  
[  
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* * *

  
 _Outside Greeley, Colorado – July 2030_

"Sam?  You remember that dead zone you showed me?  The one you found with my records?  Well, it doesn't have monsters, but it does have a mystery.  Local law enforcement filed a report on a missing couple last winter, but when I went back to follow up a few days ago, the report had been altered.

"Altered?" Sam asked, curious.

"There was a cause of disappearance listed, and it was no longer a missing persons report." 

"Sounds like good detective work to me, Bobby."

"No, Sam, the cause of disappearance was removed.  The info was all in a comment at the bottom of the form, and get this – they said the family went to visit their cousins in Tennessee, and well, here, I'll quote, 'to spend some time on the rides at Dollywood, and then come home and keep working for the town.  They've sold the house and will find new accommodations soon.'"

"That's a little odd, but –"

"Dollywood closed over two decades ago."

"Must have missed that."

"You didn't miss much.  And the house hasn't been sold.  There's no record of them filing any papers.  Part of some town trust."

"Bobby, it's weird all right, but –"

"There's another one like it – records said they took their kid with them, a boy, about ten."

"Who filed the original missing persons report?"

"That _same_ boy, and some neighbor of his, from what I can tell. But the revised report says the couple had no kids.  And get this: there are no other missing persons reports in this county – the records before 2010 don't even show up, and every single missing persons record since then has a paragraph added.  Seventy say 'Dollywood,' and thirty say "Sister City Conference."  That's a hundred reports from a county that's never had more than 15,000 people.  And you'll like this – two always go missing at the same time each year."

"Couples?"

"Not always.  Usually young, under 40 years old, always locals.  No dates, but roughly a year apart, or just under a year."

"This is in the dead zone?"

"Smack in the center, in Red Hill.  The reports have all been scrubbed."

Sam sighed. "Thanks, Bobby."

"You watch yourself, Sam."

"Why? There's not a thing for miles around there, right?"

"All the more reason."  
[  
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* * *

  
 _July 2030_

"Mr. S?"

"Yeah?"

TJ thought carefully before he asked.  Hector was drinking a lot more these days, and he needed to be just right with his questions or they wouldn't get answered.

"How did Sam and Dean get to be hunters?"

"Oh, you know, it's not so…"  TJ was waiting for more than a story, and his eyes were locked on Dean's face, expecting the truth from a man who'd kept every promise so far.  "...lost their mother, got dragged around by their father until he made a deal- until they ended up finishing his work.  And by then, things had gotten bigger than either of them." 

"Why didn't they stop hunting?  If it was so dangerous?" he asked, all logic to Dean's increasing turmoil.

Dean had kept the stories simple, editing out the worst violence and any reference to demons and soul trading.  He aimed for kid-friendly, ended up somewhere around teenager, and TJ loved it.  No one else seemed to understand that ten was really a lot more like fifteen, and he was ready for more. 

"They're just stories, kiddo.  They're not really real.  They're like…" and he stalled, unable to keep track of his lies or the bottle cap that slipped from his fingers as he twirled it.  "They're just hunters.  That's what they do.  They do it forever."

"But why?  No one's making them."

"Oh, there were things – _daaaark forces_ ," he intoned.  "But Sam and Dean loved hunting.  One of them loved it more, one loved it less, and they took turns with that."

TJ was baffled. 

Dean's story that night was longer than usual, a story that took three beers to tell, with candlelight for when the day slipped into dark.  Long before the end, TJ was asleep and Dean was looking out the window at the night sky, talking about the  mysterious man who played tricks and the day that went on forever and ever.  _Sam had to watch me die, and he still thinks he had it worse than I did in Stull Cemetery.  I lost two brothers, and the only man I could ever love.  No idea, Sam, no idea._

***

When the bathroom bulb flickered on, dim and sickly as his reflection under it, he saw a man eaten away by the world, by a life of killing and death, by hellhounds and avenging angels.  The lines around his eyes and the hollow cheeks had filled in only slightly in the five years of relative ease, and the beer kept adding its calories to his body.  He ran a critical eye over the man in the mirror, who wasn't him.  _He_ was the guy who told demons to fuck off, who took life after life, including his own, to keep his brother from losing a war against destiny.  The man in the mirror was weak.  _Weak, tired, and too familiar._

Dean slept poorly and dreamed of a home with Sam in an unsettling and unreal world.  TJ dreamed he was Dean, driving a big, loud car and shooting monsters.  Red Hill's citizens, all of them, tossed and turned, their wishes eluding them in dreams until they woke to emptiness and indescribable aching.

  
[ _ **Humming                Portishead  
**_](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DR7Y8JNZ)[ _ **Like A Stone                The Highway Sun Allstars**_](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JBXXGQGK)[  
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* * *

  



	5. FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 4. How It Ended

_**FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 4. How It Ended** _   
**  
How It Ended** [   
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  


  


  
_August 27, 2030_

The Impala rolled down the highway on a rebuilt engine and new tires, her roar undimmed.  Sam still felt a bit like a caretaker, even though Dean had given her away.

"I can't think of a bridge that we didn't burn at least halfway through," Sam worried, watching Bobby on the videophone as he drove through the foothills.

"I recall _very clearly_ my resignation as your couples counselor decades ago," Bobby said.

Sam hung his head, but it was more in defeat than shame.  There was no chuckle at Bobby's joke.

"Eyes up, idjit!  Look, Sam, you know you got no chance of finding him even if you think you know how he thinks.  He's gone deep, and we should respect that."

"I really don't need your –"

"The hell you don't.  Your folks ain't around to give you grief, so I will."

"Sorry, Bobby." 

"You look too much like your daddy, you know that?  That or your phone has a crap camera in it."

Sam glared at him, John's glare under the brows, John's hands crushing the steering wheel to vent anger.  Bobby let it pass and regretted he'd ever made the comparison.

"What you and Dean had was special.  I'm not sure it was right, but you two never were quite right.  It was right for you, I guess is what I meant.  As much as this lead looks like it might take you to him, is that what you want?"

"WHAH!!"  Sam slammed on the brakes and swerved left, cursing. 

***

"Sam!"

"I'm okay, Bobby," he replied after taking stock, his breath fast and loud now.

Some of the teenagers he'd almost hit came up to the window.

"Sorry about that, Mister."

"Watch where you're playing, next time."

"No one comes down this road hardly.  Not in weeks."

"You kids know where Red Hill is?"

"You're in it.  Everything from the park south past the creek and up the other side of the valley.  Cool car."

"I'm hangin' up now, Sam," Bobby muttered.

***

"Tell me another Winchester story…"

"Okay, which one, the one about the friendly vampire or the one about the shape-shifting baby?"

"No, tell me a new one.  Where are they now?"

The pain, briefly gone, returned. _Where are they now?_

Dean knew Sam was alive.  If he had died, Dean would know.  Cas would appear, or Bobby would finally track him down, or most likely his heart would just stop.  He'd _know_.  And for now, Sam was alive, out there.

After a very long pause, Dean said, "Okaaay…" and began a long story, inventing what he thought would be Sam's ideal tale, a hero fighting the dark, and in the process almost he left Dean out of the tale entirely. 

TJ soon interrupted with an impatient "What about Dean?"

"Dean?  He's out there too.  He found a way to save people without hunting."  _Or I will, someday._

***

Sam worked toward the bottom of his second container of fried rice as he tapped the laptop keys with his left hand, but maps of the area at the level of detail he needed refused to appear.  He grew frustrated and slammed the laptop closed.

Exercise didn't calm him either.  Small town fever, he and Dean had called it – the need to get away before whatever was after you caught up.

He left the Starlite, Livingston's sole remaining accommodation, just after dark, the clock in the Impala showing 8:30 p.m.  He asked for directions at the front desk and headed out of town up a state route to where he hoped to find the Coffey house.  To his surprise, he was just past the first farm when his headlights caught the mailbox number.  When he slowed, he saw two driveways branching off from the road, the left one up to a darkened house, the right curving off into trees, revealing nothing.

He coasted in and parked the car in the shadowy area between the porch and the outbuildings and made his way toward the front door. The night was noisy with crickets and the occasional mosquito he had to slap.  The dark where he'd parked was nearly impenetrable now, but moonlight helped him see a missing stair and make it to the front door without incident.  A cheery family greeting hung askew on a rusting chain, and he knew he was in the right place.

The door unlocked but didn't budge.  When he leaned on it, slowly using more of his weight, it gave a sharp crack and swung open, spilling him into a foyer with a stench of decay and mildew like he'd never met.  There wasn't a sound, except for a low hum, barely audible. It was louder near the basement door, but there was nothing running down there, from what little he could see.

The outside noises were muffled as he made his way further into the quiet house.  _No pictures?_ he wondered as he checked the third room.  The back door was shut but not locked.  He lifted the side of the curtain and peered out into darkness. A few late lightning bugs still hovered in the yard, winking in and out.

 _No sign of violence, no sign of packing for a trip.  And nothing personal left behind._    He recognized the signs of a clean-up, the sloppy but comprehensive erasure of three people.  _Why isn't this making sense?_

Sam left out the back, reaching up with his knife to make five small indentations, his Winchester seal.  He gasped, frozen to the spot with his flashlight on the set of marks already there.  The only explanation was no explanation at all.  _Dean's hunting?_   _Dean's on_ my _hunt?_   _Dean's_ here _?_   His vision dimmed and he had to look down for a second.

When he'd recovered, several deep breaths later, he ran the flashlight along the door frame again and the same W sprang out.  It leaned to the left, Dean's underhand grip on the knife and natural right-handedness there for Sam to see. 

He added his own mark as he did on every hunt, comforted and riled to see them side-by-side again. He made his way around the corner of the house to the car.  Below, just a hundred feet down the slope was the orange glow of a kitchen window and the room beyond, the next house. 

He let the Impala roll nearly to the main road before he turned the engine over.  He headed out slowly, lights off, and was halfway back to town before he realized they were still off.

***

Dean was ad-libbing the parts of the story that featured him, building a world with the sounds and smells of Rockcastle County, the slow pace of his life now. Memories of his year with Lisa and Ben crept in unbidden; TJ recognized these parts and complained.

"You're just telling about us, not about the Winchesters."

"No, they're really a lot like us." _He's not buying this at all._   "Look kid, I'm tired.  You get to sleep, and we'll go fishing tomorrow."

"You made the story about us because I'm like them, right?"

"Don't ever," Dean warned, as a rumble came through the porch window, hard to place, deep and purring, then faded away.  TJ listened and knew it. 

"I bet the Impala sounds like that car, only louder."

"A lot louder –" 

Dean didn't finish the thought, or the story – he raced outside.  There was nothing but some night wind in the trees and a distant sound that could have been his memory trying to hear that rumble again.  __

_That was her._

***

TJ was at his old home, now bright and clean and new, playing with his family in the back yard under the trees.  His father raked up the yellow leaves into huge piles almost as fast as TJ scattered them; his brother encouraged him at this until Charley gave up and joined them.  What TJ liked best was how his brother kept trying to bury himself in the leaves.  Somewhere during the dream, his brother vanished.

LeeAnn dreamed of her dead uncle, from whom she inherited her cafe, and woke feeling sad and lonely.  Her husband Gil hated waking up next to her in any mood but contented himself with the safety guaranteed to them, financial and spiritual.  Nothing threatened his family here.  Not in Red Hill.  Gil didn't speak about his dream or the brother he'd lost in childhood and spent all night chasing down. 

Dean dozed off thinking about Ben, growing up resentful, and how Lisa had left him all those years ago even though she'd understood all of it.  She understood Sam, and the thing he and Sam had going between them.  She understood the desire to keep close to family but she was still able to find her own needs and get away.  _Why can't you see it that way, Sam?_ he asked, waking himself up with own voice and wondering if he could still hear the Impala just outside his door, the way he'd told TJ about it, the Winchesters alone on some distant highway, making everything all right again.  
[  
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* * *

  
 _August 28th, 2030_

The Impala was still first in Dean's mind.  Behind her wheel was the ghost of a man he hadn't talked to in a decade, hadn't seen or touched. He hustled TJ through breakfast then outdoors to play.

"But not in the pond.  Not till I get down there."

He left just after TJ, out the kitchen door and up the hill through the trees onto the Coffey's property. There were no other neighbors for at least a mile, just trees, and in the other direction, the small Brunnen Farm.  The house was untouched and dead.  There wasn't even police tape, so oddly muted was the local reaction to their deaths. 

As the back door swung open, it creaked loudly; Dean grabbed it to silence it, and the top hinge came loose from the wall where an old leak had softened the wood.  As he pushed it back into place, he saw them.  Five dark points, each no bigger than a dot, had been sunk into the doorframe.  _A crown of five, a W, inside top right – Sam's position._ Dean frowned and his brow wrinkle grew even more pronounced.  An old shoulder twinge returned, and he rubbed at it, keeping his eyes on the mark.

His own was still there, in the other corner, subtler. _I'm not imagining this._ This was Sam's mark, and it hadn't been there last year, and the Impala…  _My head hurts_ , he thought, rubbing his eyes a third time.  He exhaled, then again, and started chuckling.  _Not here, not now.  And I don’t even want it to be true._   He stomped around the house the long way, to come at things from a different angle, but the place was still dead.  _And if this isn't Sam, it's one hell of a coincidence._

***

Around noon, Sam was crossing the parking lot of the "Beer, Bait and Ammo" shop, bullets in a bag that swung hard against his knee.  He slid behind the wheel, pushing the ammo under the passenger's side seat for the moment.

Behind him, in the main lot out front, some jerk kept honking, and it scraped a nerve.  He finally turned and looked out the back window, seeing only a black truck shimmering in the summer heat.   A hand extended from the open passenger door, the driver leaning over to help a kid in, but the kid wasn't getting in.

Sam had things to do, but he stared instead.  The hand gestured vigorously, but the honking stopped, thankfully.  The hand relaxed and waited, and the kid finally grabbed it and was pulled up into the truck.  He reached out a second later to pull the large door shut with both hands.

The extended hand, the young kid reaching up, being pulled in… it reminded Sam of John dragging Dean into the car to head out on a hunt while Sam held down the motel room.  It was Dean pulling him up off the floor when he had to leave Stanford, when he fell in Cold Oak, whenever he needed help.

He shook his head and felt the midday heat building in the Impala.  The truck wasn't Dean's, the guy driving wasn't Dean, the kid wasn't him.  He watched the truck in his rear view, turn signal blinking as it paused before leaving the lot.  _Definitely not Dean._

***

Why exactly he followed, he wasn't sure.  The road led north, winding up over a hill past a freshly plowed field and then on along the east side of a valley. He stayed well back, unable to see the truck clearly, losing it briefly. He drove past a few places, not seeing any sign of the truck out front, then noticed a puff of dust hanging in the air, drifting across the road by a dirt and gravel track that angled back and down into a clump of trees.

It was different in the daytime, but the split driveway was very familiar. The house he'd investigated the night before sat unmoving, its vacant windows dark.  It was too much of a coincidence that he'd come to the same place again.

He drove a few hundred feet more and found a quiet spot on a side road to pack the ammo with the weapons cache in the trunk.  When he was done, he looked back up at the road he'd just driven, seeing nothing but trees and tall hedges.  He heard a truck go by on the main road and decided to walk the short distance back to locate the neighbor who'd filed the missing person report.

***

There was no name on the mailbox and no sign of a truck anywhere.  Sam approached the house, far off at the end of the long, looping driveway.  It was unassuming but tidy. Beyond the house was a shed large enough for a car and a workshop.  The wood stacked there was old, before last season's. Sam followed the gravel strip so as not to leave footprints, and straightened his tie and coat. 

 _Dean…_

His mind raced at the possibility. Up the steps at the front, he turned briefly to look out at the view.

 _Is this where you escaped to?_

The cold chill of just maybe being wrong shook through him.  A house full of someone else's things, but no sign of Dean – that would be worse than finding him.

The deck planks creaked under his weight and he paused, then looked in the window.  There was nothing to see but a chair or two.  No one home and nothing he could recognize of Dean or their past.   He saw no alarm wire; Dean wouldn't need an alarm – he would have a gun or a knife on him and that would be protection enough.

Sam picked the lock in a few seconds, and the door swung in over tiles, the wind from the valley blowing the scent away from Sam's nose for a second.  He stepped into the gloom and closed the door quietly, then lost control when the scent hit his nose – a scent that embraced him and shoved him to the floor, that rubbed his nose in itself and made him cry uncle, made him Dean's again.

"Dean," poured out of him two, maybe three times; he was home.

A shuddering relief came over him with such strength that he found himself breathing shallow and fast, his pulse up.  That he'd sunk back against door and slid to his knees hardly surprised him.

He wiped his arm over his face and shook his head.  With effort he stood again, dizzy from hyperventilating, laughing now in joy, fear chasing close behind it. It smelled like Dean, no mistake – a smell that Sam had joked about as a kid and fallen in love with as a teen. He walked through the house, standing briefly in the stillness of each room, just a few inches past each doorway, never really entering. This was his brother, back around him again.  The tears dripped off his jaw, on both sides. 

The basement door was locked, but a cool draft around the edge told him it was there. The kitchen was clean, almost unused except for the knife cuts on the countertop and the rows and rows of empty beer bottles ready for return.  The bedroom was similarly spare and undecorated.

Sam was looking for some physical sign – a photo, some clothing, a weapon even, but the house refused to reveal much about its owner beyond a general cleanliness, reserve, and simplicity.

 _Dean._

Sam's eye caught on the clock on the desk – nearly two hours had passed since he stepped inside. _Two hours?_   He double-checked against his watch and was dismayed to find how the day had slipped with hardly a sign.  He pulled on a locked drawer in the desk and the alarm cry was raised from outside the house, up toward the road.

"I know!  I'll bring it _tomorrow_ " a young boy was yelling.

Sam moved quickly to the window overlooking the entry drive and saw a kid trudging down toward the house, still waving at a car that remained out of sight on the road.  Sam turned around, nearly toppling the beer bottles, and realized there was nowhere to hide.  He sprinted to the front door and let himself out.  The kid opened the back door to the kitchen using the key on a string around his neck, and went in a second later.

Sam took the steps at a jump and vanished around the back of the house.

 _A kid?  He has a kid?_

He waited a few moments, letting the breeze clear his head, then went back around the house to the front, ducking below windows, and approached again down the drive, as if for the first time.  
   
He knocked on the door, badge at the ready.

 _Dean's house. What do I do now?_

***

The kid slid open a small window near the door, and looked out assertively through the screen. 

"Hi there," Sam started awkwardly.

"Who are you?" asked the kid.

"I'm Sam. Who are you?" 

Where that had come from, Sam couldn't say, even when he told the story later.  His badge said something very different, so he folded it away.

"Well, that's my name too," TJ said, lying.

TJ picked the name of the bravest person he knew.  He'd learned enough to be careful, but the man at the door didn't seem dangerous – more sad than scary.

"Is your Dad here?" Sam asked, not knowing which answer he wanted most.

"He's out hunting."

"Hunting?  Like duck hunting?"

"I don't know.  He never takes me with him.  Thinks I don't know how to shoot.  But I do.  He taught me enough to protect myself."

 _Ballsy. Dean's influence?_

"Do you know where I can find him?  I like hunting too."

"He'll be home soon enough."

A truck roared up the road and turned sharply into the drive.  Sam looked panicked, but the kid was happy.

"There he is now," he said, running toward the back door.

Sam stood frozen on the porch, nowhere to run, not sure he wanted to.  The joy he'd felt before evaporated in a splash of reality.

 _Time's come._

***

"Hey, kiddo!"

"Hey Mr. S."

"Will you get the milk out of the back?"

"Sure.  There's someone to see you."

"What? Who is it?" 

"Some guy with a badge.  I lied and said my name was Sam."

"Why'd you lie?" Dean asked, concerned.  "Is it a cop?"

"Naw, some guy in plain clothes.  A detective, probably."

"You have an overactive imagination," Dean said calmly as his insides churned.  "Why don't you go hang out over at Lonnie's.  Show him how we kick ass on the new controllers."

"I wanna see what the guy wants."

"No, you go play. I'll talk to him myself."

TJ set off reluctantly up the drive with his bike but stopped when Dean went in the back door. 

Sam heard the other door slam.  He rubbed his face again and tried to prepare.  Dean's voice, deep and strong, was vibrating that chord in him that he'd never been able to still once it was struck.

Dean opened the front door quickly, and Sam, still leaning on the side of the house, turned to him.  The wind had died and left them both without breath, it seemed.  Dean looked at him for a long time, mouth open, face moving through a dozen expressions, each more confused than the last.  Sam stood and shivered, his muscles had gone so tight. 

***

 _Sam._ He needed it to be a word, a sound that would come out, mean something, fix this awful silence. 

"Dean." 

Dean fought down the sob and locked his jaw tight.

"I didn't come looking for you," Sam apologized.

"You came about the murders," Dean replied matter-of-factly.

"I came about something worse," Sam said, curious that this was their first conversation.

"About why Red Hill's a big –"

"Empty spot," they said at the same time.

TJ appeared at Dean's side, and Sam looked down at him with new curiosity.

"No, he's not," Dean said, neither proud nor embarrassed, but feeling he should be one or the other.

"Who are you?" the kid asked, watching Sam closely.

"It's – " and here Dean's mind ran out of things to say, his cool glibness gone, his thoughts at an end in the full glare of Sam's presence, the brother he'd actually walked away from.

"Is he a detective?" TJ asked.

"The best," Dean said, regret tingeing his words.

"I thought maybe I saw you downtown, didn't know if it was you - something clicked, so I followed," Sam tried to explain.

"TJ, go back inside. Sam and I have to talk."

"Sam? That's really his name?" TJ was more curious than ever. 

"It's not _your_ name, is it?" Sam asked him, but TJ was staring intently now.

"Go to your room," Dean insisted.

"Are you… _Sam_?" TJ burst out, saying the name with unabashed awe.

"That's me, yeah," Sam said, hesitantly.

"Sam _Winchester_?"

Sam looked genuinely surprised, but lying seemed beside the point now.

"Yeah…?" he said carefully, judging the kid's reaction and Dean's.

TJ's was more of an explosion, past Dean to grab Sam's coat, then turn and look at Dean, who seemed to know the next question and closed his eyes in fear of it. TJ spun back around at Sam, shouting now –

"Is he _Dean_ Winchester?"

"Um…"

"TJ, now!" Dean barked.

"He is! I _knew_ it!" TJ went on, hopping around to look at Sam and back at Dean, who both stood apart from the utter joy that radiated off the kid.

***

Dean had gone to get the rest of the groceries in an attempt to restore the elusive normality of his day. Sam had a beer in his hand, last of the third case Dean had gone through that week.  With the lights still off, the room was dim and the furniture looked only lightly used.  Sam stood, composing himself, while TJ peeked out the door of his room.

"How do you know about Sam and Dean Winchester?" Sam asked TJ quietly, while Dean was gone.

"He's always telling these stories about Sam and Dean, how they're out there on the road somewhere, fighting monsters, saving people –"

"The family business," they finished together, TJ soaring on his fantasy come to life, Sam sinking into a disturbing new reality.

"They're the best stories ever – vampires, ghosts –" TJ said, stepping out of his room.

"They're _not_ the best stories. Not to tell little kids," Sam said, worried at what Dean had done.

"I’m not a little kid, I'm ten and a half," he argued convincingly. Sam had no refutation for that.

"They make him sad, though," TJ continued, joining Sam by the couch.  "Why doesn't he talk to you?  Why aren't you together?"

"Sam and Dean – those are old stories, kid. We're not the same guys anymore." 

"I wish I had a brother.  It sucks being an only child. I had a dream last night that I had a brother out there somewhere, just like him."

Sam squatted down and put his hand on TJ's shoulder. 

"You dreamed that?"

"Just last night.  But I've thought about it for a while."

"Since when?"

"I don't know."

"Sam!" Dean said, catching the tail end of Sam's questioning. 

"He dreamed about a brother."

"So did I –" Dean let slip.

"So did half the people I talked to in town yesterday, Dean. They all brought it up."

"TJ, I said to go to your room," Dean reminded him.

TJ hesitated, and Dean leaned over him. 

"Now," he said in a tone that was uncomfortably familiar to Sam.  TJ vanished into his room and shut the door.

"Whatever you've found out?  You want to hunt it, you hunt it," Dean said, holding the mask tight to his face.  "Leave him out."

"Dean, there's something here."

"I found the one place I could stop hunting and now here comes something to ruin it?"

"I could use your help."

"And leave when it's done? Not come back?"  Dean asked, not a trace of anger in his voice.

Sam had no ready answer, so he changed the subject. 

"Who the hell is this kid, anyway?  Are you a dad now?"

"A guardian.  His parents vanished a while back."

"There's no record of them.  The house was scrubbed."

"Maybe that's why there's an empty spot. People just disappear.  It's not supernatural – damn it, Sam!"  _You brought this back with you.  It isn't my life anymore.  
_  
Dean paused and rubbed his face; Sam's heart sank, and he braced himself.

"Sam, you need to go.  Forget today and go on with your hunting. Kill it, whatever it is.  That's not me now."  _Still time to close this door._

"If that's what you want," Sam said calmly, handing Dean the easiest, oldest, most familiar excuse.

Sam left without touching his brother.   No hug, no handshake.  He took with him the sight of Dean at fifty, worn down despite all his rest, and a memory of the deep voice that made the Impala's rumble just a pale imitation he'd used to lie to himself for too long.

***

Dreams swept through Red Hill that night, violent nightmares of brothers. Sam had a dream, alone in his motel bed.  It was about Dean leaving, or returning, he couldn't be sure, but it was painful nonetheless.  Dean dreamt too, that very same night, and it was far worse – the kind of nightmare he hadn't had since after Sam fell into Hell with Lucifer inside him.  Dean woke up screaming.  He covered his mouth and screamed again as he shook.  Sam's name echoed through the small house.  Dean couldn't sleep the rest of the night and neither could anyone else in town.

The people of Red Hill were uniformly tired, impatient, unkind, unsettled, and intensely curious the next day, whether or not they had been made a part of the thing that lived below them.  In their dreams they'd seen a field at night, red streams running down into it like a volcano in reverse, and a man of light at the center, arms sunk into the ground, full of need and hunger.  They all longed to meet him. Most woke then, some in ecstasy, some in panic.

Taking the story up from one of his customers at the bar the next day, Gil continued dramatically, "and above the hill were two falling stars; they looked like they might collide, but each fell to earth in a blaze of light.   Then the scene was daytime, and I saw myself in the dream, looking at my brother. I couldn't get closer, but I wanted to." 

"I saw my sister, from over by Mt. Vernon," said LeeAnn, as the others in the beauty parlor nodded.  "She and I haven't talked since that fight we had."

Just wanting to get closer, wanting to reach the person they saw was painful, they all agreed as they shared their stories.

"I saw my brother, and he died a decade back," said Jesse, and many in the sheriff's office understood the emotion behind the words that brought him to tears.  "Someone's come to our town.  Someone's upset it."  
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _August 29th, 2030_

Dean came to Sam at the Starlite, the second time they met.  There was no hug this time either, at first.

There was some piece of his father standing there at the door, a part lost forever when John died.

"I still see Dad in you," Sam said, to avoid saying something more painful. _So much of him in you now, Dean._

Dean looked at the bed, and at the TV, thinking " _probably as porn free as the entire county_ ," and then looked back at Sam. 

"Yeah well, you got the worse half of Dad," he said.  "All driven, guilty hunter."

"And you got the failed-parent guilt.  I think we're even."

"Between us we'd make one really wonderful fucked up person, if we could just get it all back together," Dean smirked.

He stopped as soon as he said that, and Sam let it lie. 

"You want some whiskey?"  
   
"Beer's fine."

"What did I miss?" Sam asked, finally inviting Dean into the shabby room he'd rented.

The silence of important things fell on the room and despite their best efforts it strangled the conversation for a long time.

***

"Did you ever find someone else?"  Dean asked, finally.

"No," Sam muttered awkwardly.

"Did you really just slap it this whole time?"

"Dean," Sam yelled, his face a familiar mask of  "improper topic" as he shoved his brother.

It made Dean laugh, for a moment, and he shoved back.  Sam pushed him again, and he shoved back, leaving his hand on Sam's arm.  He saw it then.  Sam, in his subtle, quiet way, was losing the battle to be okay with this.

 _Dean.  Be serious._

"I know this is serious – major.  I know," Dean said, searching for the right words, his weakest skill.

 _If we're anything to each other…_

"You mean a lot to me, Sam.  That never changed."  
   
Sam knew well how to find Dean's real thoughts in his face or in his cleaning of a gun or the number of whiskey shots it took him to forget a case, but this Dean was impenetrable at first.

 _Can I still make this work?_ Dean wondered.

The movements of his hands, the involuntary licking of his lips, the deepness of the furrow as his frustration grew – it all revealed a myriad of information. His eyes flicked to the door, the window, always vigilant, and then back to Sam's eyes, every time. In the stillness of the stale room, Sam gradually remembered the language, and all that Dean was telling him.  His eyes widened.

"You're horny!  You wanna fuck.  After 15 years of nothing, that's your first thought?"

"Well – yeah, Sam."

Dean didn't take his eyes off his brother, not even when hands reached out, and strong arms encircled him, and he caught the smell of the Impala's seats mixing with the old Sam Winchester scents.

***

They clutched at each other, kissing and pressing tight, years of longing finding a way out that didn't require settling anything that mattered.  In the midst of it, Castiel cleared his throat to state, "This is a bad time, isn't it."

Sam fell off the edge of the bed, awkwardly tried to climb back up and realized his jeans were halfway down his thighs and his aroused state showed clearly through his underwear.  Dean was frozen on the bed, shirt up, jeans unzipped and his lips swollen and red, like Sam's.

"Cas?" Dean asked in disbelief more than embarrassment.

Castiel watched them unfazed, then went on.

"You are not ready."

"Not at the moment," Dean complained.

'"Where have you been for the last five years?"  Sam asked, still very red-faced.

"You've seen him?" Dean asked.

"Just once or twice," Sam said quietly.

"You asked to be left alone, Dean.  I gave you my word."

"What do you want, Cas?" Sam asked, running his fingers through his hair and pushing his shirt back into his pants.

"Your self-imposed exile is at an end, Dean."

***

That afternoon, Cas told them Heaven's tale of the outcast and fallen archangel Lucifer, the one who created demons out of human souls.  Despite its familiarity, Sam and Dean felt their skin crawl as they listened to the full story.  There was something new and worse in it this time.

"…and before he turned the first soul into a demon, before he got it… right…, he got it wrong, many times.  There are still obscenities littered around the world, awful miscarriages of creation. Lucifer made many evil things we've never found; he hid them away from the light of God."

Sam had zipped up as discreetly as he could on the floor and now joined Dean, who'd pulled the covers over himself.

"They respond only to his call.  And they're hard to kill," Castiel concluded.

"I thought I'd earned a rest," Dean cracked, all fake amusement.

"No rest for the wicked, Dean," Sam muttered, as torn about this news as his brother.

"And that's why _you_ keep hunting, Sam.  Why come to _me_ now?" Dean pursued, looking up at Castiel.

"We only began to sense it recently.  Its strength has surged in the past few days, and I fear you two are the cause." 

"Great – we're some demon's PowerBar?"

"Your longing for each other, more specifically. It feeds a darkness." 

"Jeez, judgmental much?" Dean interrupted, mocking Castiel's tilted head.

"We weren't having –" Sam swore.

"No, it feeds an actual darkness - a creature." Cas was confused by their confusion.

***

"And I have to hunt again, because you say so?"

"You do not.  You have a choice, now and after this and every day forward.  This town is under the control of one of Lucifer's darkest children, almost completely now, and it is spreading far from here.  It feeds on the inhabitants, and it will feed on you, and on the boy you took in."

At this, Dean got out of bed and pulled his shoes on.

"I've got some info from Bobby," Sam said, "but it only shows what _isn't_ here – what exactly are we fighting?" Sam asked.  "Everything in town seems normal."

"It's below ground, part of the earth.  Lucifer freed it from where it was banished centuries ago and called it back to the surface.  It was defeated once, but it covers itself well and uses humans before consuming their souls.  It is longing and need made physical form."

"I don't know if I should run through the street yelling "Soylent Green is people!" or "They're here already! You're next!" said Dean, provoking only a curious stare from Castiel, and a roll of Sam's eyes.

"I'll go out and see what I can find, then," Sam said immediately.

"You do that, Sam," Dean said, coldly.

"And you?"

"I'm going to make sure TJ is safe, Sam.  And someday, Cas, I'll give you a piece of my mind.  But I am not gonna hunt this thing.  I gave that up, or have you forgotten the last however-many years of me not being with you, Sam?"

"Should I turn out the lights when I'm done and just leave your happy town?  'Thanks, bye, we're cool'?" Sam asked, hurt.

"Do what you do best, Sam."

The door closed behind Dean – not a slam, but it was final, and Castiel was gone too, and only the fan hummed noisily from below the window, stinking of mildew and making Sam's eyes water.

***

Sam spent that night at the motel in a half-sleep that was full of visions of Dean, and the look on Castiel's face as he spoke of what grew beneath the town.  Dean was alive not two miles away, and Sam lay alone in his stifling room, confused and helpless.  He called Bobby after midnight, never a good idea.

"You're up," Sam said, surprised.

"It happens when you're my age.  Now make it quick.  I need to get back in bed before I'm all the way awake."

"I found him."

"Let me sit down."

"Bobby, I found him," Sam said, his voice full of excitement and barely concealed terror.

"Now I know this is big.  Really big.  But you sound like a schoolgirl, Sam.  Calm down. Is he okay?"

"He's great.  Looks a bit older.  Has a kid."

"A kid?"

"Not his.  Neighbor kid he adopted when the parents were killed."

"Tell him to call me, the sonofabitch."

"I will," Sam said quietly.

"Are you gonna – Did he _wanna_ be found?"

"Look, we know what it is.  Cas showed up."

"That pest?"

"He says it's something Lucifer created a long time ago and called up again before we put him back in the cage.  It's got the town in its control, or a lot of them.  I'm going to work on finding out how tomorrow."

"Sam, you be careful.  With the monster, and with Dean."

***

The feeling of restlessness was as strong as ever.  Sam wanted to go to Dean. He could walk there in a half hour.  Drive there in five minutes.  _Be with Dean, talk to him, even if Dean won't talk._   He could see Dean in his mind, clean-shaven as ever but his hair grown a bit longer, hands as sure with a gun as they were fumbling when they found Sam's body again.  Sam barely even dozed in the remaining hours before sunrise.

***

That night, Sam and Dean's nightmares returned to everyone but them.  Every dark moment that had taken them farther from a normal life played across the minds of Rockcastle's citizens, and none of the joyous ones that made it all matter.  TJ dreamed of Sam and Dean as well, his heroes come to life, but saw glimpses of their terrible past, the things Dean had spared him over the year of storytelling. 

Red Hill dreamed of Winchesters, and beyond Red Hill they dreamed too, and to those who belonged to the creature, it made sense.  The brothers belonged together, and if that's what Sam and Dean wanted, they would make sure it never happened.  The thing below them reached into everyone that night, a pulsing hum in the back of the head, explaining how Sam would be protected and Dean forever separated from him. 

Most people woke confused, but the members of the true town now saw their purpose, and it was so good.  They would feast on this pain forever, the hunger between the brothers, the love and lust and family bonds.  The thing beneath them was hungry now, and they were just as ravenous.  
[  
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  
 _August 30th, 2030_

Sam stumbled dead tired through the next morning, the awful motel coffee holding him together until he could eat a real meal.  The cafe looked closed.  The sign read, "We open at 6!" and Sam didn't quite process that it was already closer to nine-thirty.

He sat on the bench out front for a few minutes, sorely out of place in the small town, and endured the stares of morning dog-walkers and shoppers.  The town seemed to come alive all at once, people moving down every sidewalk, cars driving by, and behind him the bustle from the cafe, getting ready to open.  If he'd been more alert, he would have noticed that at least one person had their eye on him at all times, and that nearly every one of them looked at him with something approaching lust – or greed.

"Come in, sir," came a cheery voice from the door as the bells jingled a greeting.  "We have a brand new section upstairs that you're welcome to try."

"Well, thanks, but I just wanted some coffee and some eggs –"

"You head up, and I'll bring you our breakfast special, two eggs scrambled and sausage with biscuits."

LeeAnn's hand pointed at the stairs, cluttered with debris that had been hastily shoved aside since Sam first came in the day before, and her hand remained raised to guide him, her face an unwavering smile.  Sam made his way up the staircase to a large spare room with a few tables and chairs that looked hastily scattered and a storage area off to one side.

She set a menu down on one table, watched Sam seat himself there, and then pushed the door shut and locked it. 

***

The street looked the same as it did every day to Dean's eyes - warm, sunny, the occasional shopper, the drivers turning into the hardware store parking lot, the woman leaving Clark's real estate office.  They each watched Dean unobtrusively, and he was happy to think he had the kind of invisibility he'd perfected over the years.  It served both his suspicion and his guilt well. 

But LeeAnn's place was closed.  Despite the prime breakfast/lunch crossover hour, and the sign proclaiming it open, it was 9:45 and the door was locked, the place deserted. Dean's need for some of her pie, a rumbling he silenced with a hand pressed to his stomach, was not at all odd, but she would never close – the place positively bustled at midmorning.  Her husband's bar, next door, was open, as usual, and Dean settled for a beer, some pretzels, and the saltiest peanuts he'd ever encountered.

There was no "Hi," no "Hey, Hector!" this time.  Gil was at the bar, washing glasses.  A few guests sat drinking – two whom Dean had seen before, a few he hadn't – they appeared to be a group of university students passing through, and were the only animated ones in the place.  When they left, Dean was on his second beer, picking at the peanuts and feeling the hair on the back of his neck rise slowly.  The bar was still – so still that the neon sign buzzed heavily in the cool, beer-stale dark, the hum working its way into the back of Dean's head.  The men at the bar were motionless.  The ones at the table behind him, when he turned and snuck a glance, were staring at the ceiling.  Every alarm in his head was going off.

The smell hit his nose then, faint, a memory of a scent of his brother, sweaty from a long afternoon together, slightly panicked that they might be caught, there in the Impala, but giving himself to Dean.  _No._   Dean rested his head in his left hand, held a now-warm beer with his right, and tried to retreat from the images.  Sam's scent had gone now, replaced by panic and longing. _No._

***

Sam knew he'd walked into a trap, but it was too late.  A hand caught him under the arm and pinned it, then another looped around his right arm and the pain stunned him for a minute.  He fought well, but there were at least eight men in the room now, dragging him to the floor, pinning his legs as he struggled to break free.  One had a handful of what looked like mud.

"Hold him down," said the undersheriff. 

"We've got him," said Ray and Jay, the twins. 

The man with the mud approached.  "She wants you more than anyone else.  The pain you bring will feed her for years."

"What are you talking about?" Sam said, struggling still.

"She felt it growing as you approached, but yesterday… we've dreamed each night with her, and last night we dreamed of the Winchester brothers.  You'll be the greatest gift we can bring to the Protector."

"Who –?"

The man stepped forward and shoved the fetid mud into Sam's mouth before Sam could close it.  A strong arm wrapped around his face, sealing against his mouth and nose as he gagged on the soil, and the sickening odor of decay. Its rankness filled his nose and he vomited, choking.  He could feel the threads in it, things moving in the mud and into his throat as his body seized.

***

A loud thump from upstairs jolted Dean, already on edge.  The regulars didn't flinch – in fact, they seemed to relax.  Gil's washing resumed – a regular, almost jovial slop of suds and a flourish after rinsing as he placed the glasses on the rack.  Two conversations started up, one at the table in the corner, one between two men at the bar, breaking the odd silence. 

Dean was on full alert now, in a way he hadn't been in years.  He sensed the shift in the room, the skewed silence and subdued waiting from before, replaced now by a stereotype of a small town bar. 

 _And this was supposed to be a normal little place.  Why am I tingling all over like I just found sulfur?  
_  
Dean paid and left, forcing some simple banter with Gil, who seemed as normal as ever.  Clay Hoskins stopped him in the doorway. 

"You still coming to the car show in Louisville this weekend?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Dean said, sweating slightly and more alarmed than ever as he turned to look back at LeeAnn's restaurant, where the door stood open now, and customers filed in.  Upstairs, the windows were as vacant as ever.  In the back corner of the restaurant, he could make out Ray and Jay sitting with some of their friends, people Dean had seen them with countless times before.  Ray smiled widely and Jay mirrored him.  The smell from before, pure Sam, seemed to be there on the warm summer air again.

A car honked, and Dean realized he'd stepped too far out into the street. 

"Geezer!" yelled the teenage driver as the car passed.

Dean's skin was crawling still.  A big bad was under his feet and in the minds of the people around him. He climbed into his truck, noticing how thin the normality of Red Hill had been stretched.  LeeAnn stood in the door of the cafe, watching him go.

***

He raced home, past the farm at the curve, and spun into the gravel drive, nearly clipping the truck on the trees that separated his place from the Coffeys'. _Make sure he's okay, set up traps at the doors and windows, salt, holy water, teach him a simple exorcism.  
_  
The front door stood open, and TJ was nowhere to be found.

"TJ!"  _Gone. Crap._

***

They laid Sam in the field as the sun faded, the customary time having passed.  But Sam had not awakened as the others before, protected and safe forever from the monsters and evils of the world, ready to serve.  Sam was unmoving, and it worried them, but their minds were calmed by the presence below them.  They placed Sam as they had placed every gift, in the fresh-tilled circle at Brunnen Farm.

***

Dean was pacing outside the Starlite again, where he'd returned after circling the town three times, looking down every side street and in every store window.  The Impala sat by room 4, where Sam had checked in, but Trish the night manager had no idea about Sam or his car or much of anything it seemed to Dean.  Dean had searched the room twice, turning up nothing.  The bed was neatly made, the room cleared of everything that a hunter would keep hidden.  Dean finally leaned on the hood of the Impala, rubbing it tenderly.

 _Where are you, TJ?_ _Where did you go, Sam?_ Dean recalled walking away from Sam and his first love both on a warm spring day in California, a small note his only goodbye after years of diminishing conversation and the paranoia of the hunter's life.

He got back in his truck and headed home one more time, head pounding.  The whole town seemed to be humming and he couldn't tell if it was in his mind or not. 

He rounded the curve at the top of the first hill and even in the twilight could make out the dark spot that stood out like a mouth in the center of the green farm fields.  He drove past, thought, and then stopped on the shoulder, shutting off the motor.  He ran back the hundred feet or so and his eyes caught the movement at the center of the field.  The plow was off to the side, crushing the harvest.  It made no sense.

Three men, nearly as large as the one they supported, moved through the rows, stepping over the plants until they reached the center.  Other people gathered round and helped lay the tall figure on the dirt.  _Tall, broad shoulders and boots, legs like the Green Giant. Oh Sammy.  HE ISN'T YOURS._

Before he could frame the words or even process fully what was happening, he heard an odd sound that seemed to come from the ground itself, an exhalation, and the humming grew louder.  He ran down the hill, nearly losing an eye to a tree branch, all of it in slow motion.  The body – Sam's, he knew with a gutting certainty – was growing darker and darker, then it seemed to narrow and finally slip away into the earth. 

"Sam!" he yelled, bursting out of the bushes and onto the field, where he stumbled.  The men and women gathered there ignored him until the circle of soil was empty again, then they set upon him and struck him down, and kept him safe.  


[ _**The Hole                 Townes Van Zandt** _ ](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WPMYZ809)   
[ _**Between the Minds              Jack Savoretti** _ ](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SCE7LD74)   


  


  


* * *

  



	6. FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 5. How They Began

_**FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 5. How They Began** _   
**  
How They Began** [   
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

* * *

  


  
  


  
_Red Hill, Kentucky – August 31, 2030_

Sam woke in utter darkness.  He sat up, striking his head against a hard surface, and was rewarded with dust and clods of dirt across his face.  The memory of the mud returned, how it had writhed in his throat as he choked and swallowed his own vomit.  The taste lingered.

"Sam? Don't worry, you'll be okay." The voice was strong, masculine, and seemed to come from inside his head.

A stench overcame him like nothing he'd encountered as a hunter.  

"Your brother – do you miss him?"

It wasn’t until Sam turned that he saw the first hint of bluish luminescence, a glow far in the distance, moving slowly closer.

"Where am I?"

"Safe.  At last."

"What is this?" Sam said, swinging his arms out and finding the walls closer than he thought.  He pressed down the claustrophobia and watched the bluish light form into two spheres, eyes above a mouth that hung loosely below, the source of the voice.

"Forget all of that anger now, Sam.  Just don't forget Dean."

"Dean!"  _Dean, I need you.  Where are you?_

The eyes brightened, and with them, the whole space, all of four feet across, maybe twice that long – dark soil, a cave of some kind, or a tomb.

"Can you forgive your mother for her sins, Sam?  Or your father, for taking out his weaknesses on you?  Can you forgive Dean for leaving you?"

The other was with him now, a man sitting opposite him in the dark hole, mirroring Sam's position. His mouth was filled with decaying green and grey teeth, his eyes were looking at Sam as if he recognized him, as if he owned him.

"Who are you?" Sam asked, shaking, but with no room to back away.

"You knew my creator," he said, voice soft with wonder that such fortune could come its way.  "He brought me back, called me with all the longing in his heart, the longing to find all his children, including you."

"I'm not Lucifer's child."

"He loves you like a father.  He loves all of us."

Its voice changed as it leaned forward, eyes glowing blue from within, tongue licking lips that seemed to crumble and reform as it passed over them.  

***

Dean woke later that same day, strapped to a chair.  His neck was impossibly stiff, and his ass hurt.  He felt for his knife.  Not _there.  Damn._

"Sam?" he shouted, then decided to keep quiet.

"Dean?" came a familiar voice from behind him, testing the new name of the man he'd only ever known him as Hector Samuelson.  Dean craned his head around until he could see TJ's shoes, and his legs, bound to a post.  Relief surged through him.

"TJ!  Are you okay? You're going to be fine."

"Not for long."

"Why?"

"They're coming back."

Jesse, the undersheriff, and Gil, the bartender, walked into the room.  They were looking at Dean with what he thought was pleasure.  _Sick, inappropriate pleasure.  And what is that humming sound?_

"You were here in town all along," said the undersheriff, a thin man whose torso was too small for his long legs.  "And we never made you a member."

"Not interested."

"They all say that.  Then you find out what she can offer.  Did you know there hasn't been a ghoul in these parts in centuries?"

"You don't say," Dean replied, judging whether the pair had weapons beyond Jesse's gun.

"The Protector keeps us safe from everything.  Far better than a hunter like you ever could," Gil sneered.

"What did you do to Sam?" Dean growled.

"He's with her now.  She insisted we keep you here.  The longings Sam has in him… she hasn't feasted so well since Lucifer first created her and gave her the thousand souls."

Dean's hopes of rescuing Sam were fading.  _Cas, now.  Now. This matters to me._

"You rest some more.  We'll bring some food up from downstairs," Jesse chuckled.

***

"Is this the kind of story that made you wake up screaming?"

"Yeah, kiddo, it is."

"I'm scared," TJ said, "but it's kind of awesome too."

"Awesome?  You really need to pick up your slang from someone besides me. And this is not awesome, this is –"

"So how do we get out?"

"I'm working on that."

"Can't you just cut the ropes?"

"This isn't some TV show."

"Well, it's only a buntline knot.  Can you reach it?"

Dean reached for the rope tied across his hips, wondering what the hell a buntline knot was.  He slid his arm deeper into the loop around his wrist to reach the knot.

"Pull the first cord – no not that one.  You'll make it worse," TJ advised.

"Sam took a class in knots.  Got a high score.  I know one – it ties fast and monsters can't get out," Dean said, trying to topple the wide chair.   

After a couple of half-rolls to the side, he ended up face down and in pain, pulling himself on his palms across the floor to where TJ was tied, the knots now within easy reach of TJ's hands.

"You're bleeding," TJ said, his voice a little quieter.

"Occupational hazard.  Can you untie me now?"

"Yeah."

"Then hurry.  I can hear them coming."

Jesse entered first, and Gil got the door kicked into him, sending him crashing back down the stairs.  Jesse got a chair leg to the side of his head as he turned, but still managed to shoot a round before he lost consciousness.  TJ watched for any sign that he might get back up.  Blood pooled from the wounds on Jesse's head and TJ just stared.  Dean had his hand over a wound on his arm.

"You got shot!" TJ cried, looking at him finally.

"We need to get to Sam. Where the hell are we?" Dean asked, as he untied TJ.  

"Upstairs at LeeAnn & Gil's.  What about the sheriff?"  

"I don't think I hit him that hard.  Might not walk or talk anytime soon."

TJ was pale now, looking at the blood spreading down Dean's arm and across the floor from Jesse.

"Look kid, this is the way it is.  Those stories I told you weren't made up, but I made them a lot nicer than real life.  Come on, before anyone else shows up."

At the bottom of the stairs, Dean lifted TJ over Gil, who lay with his neck askew and no life in his wide-open eyes.

"I'm sorry, kiddo.  I'm so sorry.  I thought we were safe."

TJ was absolutely silent, looking back at Gil one more time before he pushed his face into Dean's shoulder.

***

The whole town, the whole county was pulsing.  The ones who belonged were sharing in the feast, and the ones who didn't belong were troubled by visions and odd urges all day.  Business was disrupted, not the least by a crash on the bridge over the highway.  From inside the building, Dean could hear sirens.

"Two blocks to the motel, and we're set."

"Why go there?"

"Kid, you wanna meet the Impala?"

TJ's eyes widened.

 _That oughta take some of the godawful out of his day._

***

The first person they ran into was Trish, who seemed particularly confused, especially as she was wandering toward the cafe rather than helping her motel guests. Some of them had followed her down the street, shouting angrily.  Dean pulled TJ behind him, stepping away from Trish, who seemed not to care.  Then she turned on him.

"Dean.  Oh God, Dean, you sold your soul for him!"

Dean's eyes grew, and then narrowed again.  "What going on, Trish?"

"I – I don’t know, it was just this crazy nightmare I had.  It was so _real_.  You were a hunter, and your brother died, and you made that awful deal.  And the hell-hounds came!"

"Yeah, Trish, you know how boring other people's dream stories are?  Can you walk back to the motel with me?" he said, hoping to calm her.

"Sam was there," she said, remembering a moment from her long night of dreams.

"Sure, I just need –"

TJ tugged at Dean's shirt and pointed at the twins, who were moving down the street straight towards Dean, looking at him in a way he still found unnervingly intimate.

 _This whole friggin' town is too close._

"Run, TJ," Dean said, not realizing he'd be left behind after a block, gasping.

They got to the Impala not far ahead of the twins, and TJ stood beside it, marveling.

"Out of the way, kiddo."

"We don’t have any weap– Yeah, we do!" TJ burst out, as Dean popped the trunk and flung open the cache.

"You get in the car and lock the doors."

"No! I wanna –"

"TJ, do it!"  

Dean checked the shotgun quickly, then popped Ray in the leg, noted that Sam had kept the gun in a condition equal to Dean's teaching, and then dropped Jay with a second shot.

" _Now_ get in," he yelled to TJ.

***

At the farm, Dean skidded off the road and drove the Impala down the furrows toward the fresh soil in the center where he'd seen Sam vanish.  He stopped the car near the center of the field and leaped out.

"Sam!" he shouted, looking at the fresh-tilled ground.

There was no reply.  He knelt and started digging with his hands, turning up handfuls of rich, soft soil.  Nothing.  No smell, no bits of clothing, no sign at all.  _Sam.  Find a way._

TJ got out the other side and watched Dean dig for a moment, then joined him, his small hands a poor help.  

"Get back in the car and _lock the doors_! How many times do I have to tell you?"

TJ backed away and thought.  When he reached the driver's side, he pulled the keys out and opened the trunk and the weapons cache. They were right where he expected them to be, laid out just as Dean had described in his Winchester stories.  He pulled out two bottles of what he guessed was holy water, and a crucifix.  

"You are brave, but this is not a fight for one so young and inexperienced."

"Who are you?" TJ said, starting back as Castiel touched his shoulder.

"A friend of the Winchesters.  Stand here and do as I say."

Dean had seen them now.  

"He's down there, Cas, I know it."

Castiel went to Dean, who remained on his knees, digging frantically.

"That is unlikely.  This thing would consume him almost immediately."

Two other angels appeared around the circle Dean had dug. TJ's eyes widened.

"We are ready to smite it, Dean.  Step aside."  

"Help him, Cas," Dean pleaded.  "They said he's still alive."

***

"Lucifer loves you even now, but your brother, no, _he_ doesn't.  He stopped loving and let you go.  I can make him long for you again.  As much as you need him, he can need you."

The air was close and foul, and the thing had leaned far too close, but Sam had no control over himself when it spoke of Dean's faded love.  He heard every dying conversation of their terminal relationship, saw Dean leave, watched Dean fade into darkness and there were only two blue glowing eyes – the weak, heatless light of things in dark places.

"I … he needs…" Sam tried to gather a coherent thought about Dean, but he ached with loss.  His years alone were rich fields to till, turning up fertile ground for the thing in front of him that took it all in, hungrily.

"Stay with me, here, Sam.  For good.  Tell me what you _need_."

"I need Dean," Sam forced out, trying to focus on something that eluded his mind.  He was suffocating, mouth and nostrils filling with dirt, buried under Red Hill with something dark eating into him.

***

"He's down there, Cas.  You can't attack now."

"Now is the only time, Dean.  This desperation is making it stronger."

"What do I do?" Dean whispered, hands in the soil again.

"Forgive him.  Let him be."

"Forgive him?  For what?  I'm the one who left."

"If Sam could forgive you, the longing might fade. But you cannot forgive that of yourself.  Forgive him instead for what angers you most."

Dean felt TJ's gaze from where he stood by the car, felt the cool soil around his arms.  He wondered what Sam had done that hadn't already been discussed, forgiven, put behind them.  All the pain, all the guilt of a family ruined by fate; he would never hold anything against Sam… _I just wish you'd stay with me when I say I need you._

"Not a wish, Dean, not asking for more.  Forgiveness.  And quickly."

There was nothing left, no time, no words, no feelings.

 _I know you need to find redemption, but I can't give it to you, Sam.  And I can't ask anything more of you._

***

"You approach Lucifer in your hunger for so many things – family, power, the need to be right.  A need to show the world you are so much more than they think… and you are, Sam Winchester."

Uncontrollable longings grew in Sam, for all the things the glowing creature in front of him spoke of and more; the creature devoured his need.

"What is the source of this feast?" it asked.  "Riches! Give me all of this, Sam."

Inside the pain, Sam found one last island where he could take a small breath and pray for Dean to materialize in there somehow, with him.

***

 _You know your weakness, Sam - it's me_ , said a familiar, husky voice, but higher now, panicked.

 _\- Down here, Dean!_

 _Do you think I let you go?  Do you think I got to leave everything behind?_

 _\- Dean, pick me up.  I can't breathe._

 _Lift yourself up, you jerk.  Long-legged Sasquatch like you, you could stand up.  Do you remember the pool in Wichita, how scared you were when Dad threw you in for swimming lessons?  You screamed like a girl, Sam.  Most embarrassing day of_ my _life.  And what did I say?_

 _\- "Stop screaming like a girl?"_

 _Stop screaming like a girl and stand up!_

 _\- And my head was above water._

 _STAND UP, SAM!  
_  
***

Sam moved now, for the first time, and the dirt resisted.  The threads were deep in his brain already and he wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't. The soil pressed in on him, heavy, dank, and suffocating.   He struggled up, but it collapsed down on him heavier than before, burying him alive under the field.

"Sam! Sam!!"

He heard Dean far off, and was once more back in the cave with the bluish glow, and the thing.

"You don't get to go, Sam.  Lie still and he won't find you."

"Sam!" came the voice from above, now less muffled, but angry and frustrated, a familiar voice.  Sam looked up as the top of the cave collapsed, dirt sifting into his eyes.

A bright light broke through for a moment, and Dean's arm reached out.

Dean pulled the threads away from Sam's head and face in horror, but Sam remained immobile.  _Asleep._ _Dead.  Who knows?_

***

Entwined with the threads of Lucifer's creation, Sam's soul was still able to find itself, his true self, apart from the creature and the blue glow of the dirt room, apart from Lucifer and a life lived inside a black muscle car, and apart from Dean, the man he loved. _Now or never…_ In his mind, he stood up.  

Dean kept digging, trying to get Sam free of the clinging dirt and the black threads that seemed to run out of the soil and into and _through_ him.  He shuddered with disgust but kept pulling at his brother's body.  Sam opened his eyes suddenly, and Dean, startled, let go, then grabbed Sam's arms again and tugged fiercely.  Blinding sun shone on Sam's face.  His body bent forward and Dean pulled up as hard he could, eventually tearing Sam out of the ground.  Dean stood knee-deep in the freshly made pit, adrenaline surging, his brother back in his arms.

"Go now, Dean.  Get as far as you can, as fast as you can," said Castiel.  "This will be severe.  Remember what I told you."

Dean lurched around the far side of the Impala with Sam over his shoulder, making it just before his legs collapsed and he went down hard on one knee, his shoulder injury letting Sam slip lifelessly to the ground as TJ tried to catch him.  Dean closed his eyes tight and covered Sam's and TJ's, pulling them in toward him as their own father had on a night of fire almost fifty years before.  

It felt like he imagined Hiroshima might have felt, from what he'd read in that book in high school.  The shaking, the heat, the light that erased every other thought and image, but with a deafening chorus of angels added in.  

***

Castiel knelt in the field, the ground around him turned to ash and glass.  The earth slumped and sighed as every filament of Lucifer's child shrank and died back to the core deep underground, fleeing before the fire of heaven.

Sam sat up suddenly, gasping.  Dean's hand was on his chest in a flash.  "Whoa whoa whoa whoa," he said to calm Sam, who settled back under the familiar voice and the hand that had rested there in childhood sickness and again when he rose from the dead, at every turn of his life.  Sam slipped again into unconsciousness.

Dean thought he saw Castiel and the others driving metal spikes into the ground, but he could hardly see at all for the brightness of the light that had flooded through them all.  Sam lay quietly on the ground, undisturbed now by the cataclysm.  TJ refused to open his eyes until Dean said it was okay, and even then only for brief glimpses.   

The town around them had awoken to its deeds, each and every person now fully aware that they were unprotected.  Some had felt the creature's call, as it throbbed inside them, summoning strength from their minds, in others turning the flesh black as it grew from inside to consume them.  They'd all felt the wrath of angels deep within, and some took their lives then and there, rather than face it again.  Others slipped into amnesia or felt their minds split.

* * *

  
 _September 2nd, 2030_

The field, less than three days back, seemed like a lifetime ago.  Sam had awoken only the day before, to TJ's worried face and Dean's crossed arms; both were looking down at him, judging his fitness.

"Sam, what hap –"

"Don't ask me... I could tell, but I don't want to."

Dean and TJ took care of Sam for a few days.  He was feverish for a while, but TJ made iced tea for him to drink with some of Bobby's herbal recipe and a splash of whiskey, which he tasted when no one was looking and choked on, which made everyone look.

***

Castiel didn't stay long because, as he put it, "Sam wanted to be back with you, Dean.  He got himself out of Hell this time."

"Well, Bobby helped, and TJ here," Dean said awkwardly, trying to put his love for Sam in terms TJ could understand without lengthy explanation.  

"Bobby helped?" said Bobby, all disbelief and indignation as he sat halfway out of view on the videophone.  "Damn right I helped.  He'd be stuck in a fever if you hadn't finally decided to call me after fifteen years."  

Occasionally, when Bobby retold the story, he mentioned how he'd slapped Dean "hard upside the head" at that point.  He did that every time he saw Dean from then on anyway, on principle, and Dean knew he'd offended Bobby worse than he had Sam. Sam _loved_ him, but Bobby loved him, too, and he'd left that debt unpaid for too long.

Sam smiled and waved weakly from the bed before Bobby hung up.

***

"Dean, you had a good life here," Sam said.  "Relatively monster-free.  Although they may come back now."

"They will," said Castiel.

"Cas, did you get rid of that thing?"

"We drove it down, farther than before.  It won't come back for millennia.  Only Lucifer can unmake it," he said before vanishing.

"That's cool," TJ said, looking at the empty space where Castiel had stood.

"Not after a while," Sam and Dean said simultaneously.

* * *

  
 _September 5th_

Sam improved rapidly with Bobby's medicine and TJ's care.  He was sitting on the deck in the sun, looking over Dean's land.  An argument broke out soon enough.

"I walked away from the life, not from you," Dean reminded Sam.

"And you still think my idea of Heaven was to be _free_ of you?  Jeez, Dean, self-centered even now?"

"No … yes, probably." _Rescue this, dammit_ , Dean thought, as he rubbed his hands back and forth on his jeans.  "I think I understand getting away from family. But the work – our family's always been tied to it.  I had to leave both."

Sam heard the honest answer spill out of Dean and could say nothing.  But his anger subsided, as did some of his fears.

"So what do we do instead?" he asked, genuinely open.  He let Dean think in peace, at his own speed.

"I chose this place for _no_ lore," Dean replied.

"I know.  I mean, I thought you might have."  After a pause, he had to ask, "But didn't you think it was a little odd, Dean?  No monsters, none, for miles around?  When has our life ever been like that?"

"So being 48 has made you smarter than your older brother?"

"You know, I missed your 50th; that was going to be my chance to embarrass the hell out of you." Sam grinned but Dean moped.

"I don't want to be this old, Sam.  I'm not this old."

"Dean, you're barely middle-aged. Look at Bobby – what he's still doing at 80-something.  Plus, with that whole rehymenation thing, you're what, coming up 25 again?"

Sam's face warmed under the familiar glare, and it was a good feeling after all the years alone.

* * *

  
 _September 7th, Labor Day_

"TJ is ten, his family was destroyed by demons, and he has no one."

"You can't make up for what happened to Ben by what you're doing for this kid."

"It's not always about atonement with me, Sam."

"Atonement, guilt…  Same difference.  You did know Ben's a –"

"I know what he is.  I went to his church, sat in the back row through three hours of that crap. Thinks he knows what demons are."

"We've shown people monsters before, Heaven and Hell – they don’t all change like that, Dean. You didn't make him into that fire-and-brimstone contortion of a preacher."

"The hell I didn't."

***

As the days of summer ran out, TJ had become increasingly unhappy.  He knew Sam and Dean were fighting but didn't know why, and the thought of returning to school was unbearable.  He was tired of being stuck at home and yet not at all interested in going to sixth grade, so he turned up Dean's music to drown out their bickering.

"Hey, kiddo!" Dean yelled.  "Keep it down."

TJ appeared at the door to their room.

"You _like_ that music?"  Sam asked him.

"He's trying to convince me that he does," Dean said.

Sam kept watching him, until TJ finally said, "I'm sick of being stuck here and I don’t want to go to school with these freaks next week and I don’t think you should talk about me when I'm in the next room because it's rude."

Dean laughed, and Sam joined him, which only made TJ angrier.  

"How did you not fuck him up?" Sam asked.

"I've only had him for nine months."

"I'm right here!  Stop talking about me!" TJ cried, exasperated enough to go out into the heat, slamming the door behind him.

Sam and Dean worked their way through another half a case talking about TJ, and "what to do."

* * *

  
 _September 12th - Rockcastle Rock Festival, London, Kentucky_

"The Winchesters deserve a rest.  That does not mean a rest should be taken."

"That's our decision, Cas."

"As always, mankind has free will," he said irritably and wandered off to observe the crowd, in particular a trio of women nearby who were sharing a joint and waving him over.

"Pissed _him_ off," Sam chuckled.

"So, _is_ this going to be, 'Hey thanks for saving me, see ya when I see ya, bye'?"

"What are you babbling about, Dean?" Sam asked over the music.

"Something about you and me, it brings out the worst in the world.  Our time together is just a whirlpool of suck."

Sam stopped listening, that hurt so much.  When he realized Dean was still blathering on, he started listening again and got the end of Dean's list of 'what sucks.'

"…sucks that I can't love you the way you deserve. It sucks that we can't find peace together.  There's nothing about you I don't want – except maybe the gas, but…  All this suckage is just obstacles thrown up against us, problems, responsibilities, the curse on this family, _that's_ what I want out of.  Not us."

***

A long talk unfolded from there across the rest of the day, and bands played on; festival food was enough when they got hungry, but Castiel refused to try the funnel cake.  More complicated talk, about what was and what might be, filled their afternoon, until Dean realized Sam wasn't muttering but singing along under his breath.

"Dude, you can't sing. I can't sing, and you're worse than me."  
   
"I'm having fun," Sam said, grinning.  

"When did we switch bodies?"

"TJ has a brother!"  It burst out of Sam, a half-remembered idea.

"What?  No, he doesn't.  We can move if you're getting a little too much of a contact high."

"The monster wanted me because I wanted _you_.  It fed off that longing.  But the more I thought about you, the more it made sense – the dreams people had of us, they started as dreams of brothers.  The monster must have known what was happening around it."   Sam stopped and concentrated.

"Sam?"  Dean was confused, in the way only Sam's mind could confuse him.

"It's right there, Dean.  A memory."  His face worked with the effort to recall.  "There's a brother out there somewhere."

"Is that thing still inside you?"

"No, not now – but I know it, because _it_ knew."

"TJ never said –"

"Gone before he was born," Sam blurted out, his mind racing now.

"Gone where?"

"What do we do best?" he asked, looking at Dean as if he should have had the answer yesterday.

"Hunt."  It popped out before Dean could think of anything else.

"We _help_ people, Dean."  Sam sounded disappointed.

They forgot about Cas, who was sitting with the very friendly trio, politely resisting their offer of a joint of his own or just a few hits of theirs or maybe something a little stronger, "if he was cool like that."

***

The ride back to Red Hill was brief and silent. Dean was still getting used to Sam driving the Impala, and driving it right.  The cafe and bar were closed and no one could find LeeAnn or Gil; neither Sam nor Dean would go near there in any case.  Fortunately, there was good pie just one street over, "and it's not run by zombies," Dean noted.  Sam took up the discussion from the concert as they parked.  
   
"Bobby was right not to take sides.  But we're right in the middle of this.  What do _we_ do?"

"What did you say, after you got de-souled? 'Take it on, head on, until you win'?"

"That didn't work out so well, Dean.  It's not the same on your own."

"For me it was 'let me out, I'm done, I can't.' I wanted to step out of it."

"And you got a kid and a monster for your trouble."

"And I lost my baby.  Who did not need a videophone installed in her, for the record.  But you did keep her running well."

"Where's the romance, Dean?" Sam laughed.

"Do you think _we_ get romance?  All the stuff the angels and demons made us do, and that Lucifer and Michael crap – we get the weird."

Sam laughed again, and then sadness overtook his smile. "This old weird is painful."

They were watched, from the car to the door of the coffee shop to the booth; everyone knew them now, and their life together.  Everyone had seen a bit of Hell. People stepped back, got out of the way, wished they'd leave.

 "This whole town is spooked.  You think they got the… you know. The _sex_?" Sam whispered.

"Oh god, Sam, no."  Dean's face was horrified.

***

Their waitress didn't come over until Dean turned around to look for her.

"Two cherry pies, two coffees."  Dean smiled broadly, but the charisma had the opposite effect, and the waitress practically dropped the pot of coffee on him.  After she wiped the counter off and left, Dean tried to make sense of what he'd done in the field.

"Castiel said I had to forgive you, and I didn't know what he meant.  But when I felt you there under the soil – I was up to my elbows by then-"

"Dean.  Not a pleasant memory."

"Sorry.  My point is I didn't _have_ anything to ask.  I had nothing to forgive because I didn't want you to have to give me anything."

"But I have, Dean.  You've got me.  Look, you remember the last time we saw Dad, in the cemetery?"

"Of course."  Dean was uneasy.

"He was happy because we were together.  All the deals, the demons, all the time under Alastair's knife, it left him – because he saw us together again."

"I can't –"

"I know you can't – I don't want to drag you back into a fight that you left for your own sanity."  

"I could still win that fight," Dean said bravely.  

Sam smiled.  His leg rested against Dean's as they sat at the counter, waiting for pie.  It was warm, reassuring, the way they communicated when neither had words.

"And I won't take you away from that fight, no matter how much like Dad it's made you," Dean continued.  "I don't want to hunt with you, but we…"

"We fight the evil sons of bitches or we walk away – it's an impossible choice," Sam stated.

He was still smiling, watching Dean struggle with the paradox he'd seen years before.  Dean was trying valiantly to keep up, but his face scrunched as his mind worked.

"I wanted to hunt," Sam continued, "and now I have.  You didn't want to do it, and now you… well, you haven't."

"Sam, this isn't making any–"

"It isn't supposed to make sense, Dean.  It's the _wrong_ choice, and it's not good for either of us."

"So what do we do?" Dean asked him.  

"Sorry to – to interrupt you… we only have apple pie or pecan pie," said the timid waitress.  "I know you ordered cherry, but we're fresh out and I'm _so_ sorry."  She backed away slightly, terrified.

While Sam and Dean looked at each other, she waited nervously, wondering if they had psychic conversations.

"Now I get it," Dean said.

Sam just smiled again, confirming her theory.

"This ought to cover it," Dean said, handing the girl a twenty.

"I love apple pie and you love pecan pie, but we want cherry.  Where do they have cherry pie?" Sam asked, newly confident.

***

"So we change the game?" Dean asked on the way out, unsure if he got it fully.

"Possibly.  We're still in the game, but we don’t have to play by the rules."

"How much longer does this game go on?"

"It's going to end, Dean.  We're going to end.  Dust under a stone."

"I don’t want to."

"Neither do I, Dean, but I have to think something carries on."

"I think I'm just getting my brother back and another fifty years of you wouldn't be enough.  Even if it drove me crazy.  An eternity can't be that much worse."

They found a place back in London that had cherry pie, the best Dean had tasted in years.  

* * *

  
 _September 9th, 2030 – Red Hill, Kentucky_

The police reports, hospital records, birth and deaths and everything, every last piece of information on Red Hill's citizens was being held at the police station, now partially converted to a trauma counseling center with money from Frankfort and Washington, and some of the surrounding counties.  

Sam and Dean walked right in, well noticed by everyone, but no one could look at them for long, and no one would come close.

"This is worse than being chased," Dean complained.

Sam eventually found medical records for the Coffeys but there was nothing there that suggested an earlier child.

"Dig deeper," Dean urged.

Sam found a staffer who had helped scrub the computer records, and smiled at her, but it only made her turn pale.  She explained some of the methods of hiding things, all the while rubbing her wrist with her other hand and keeping as far away from them as she could while still working the keyboard.  She never once made eye contact, and broke into tears a few times before fleeing.

* * *

  
 _September 15th, 2030_

They paid a visit to the Jones family outside Louisville, Agents Salter and Samuelson of the Adoption Services Branch of the CHFS, and they were nothing like the family expected.  By the time they left, their son was moderately excited to get a new little brother, the best outcome they could have hoped for, but Mr. and Mrs. Jones were certain they'd just been through the Inquisition.  

TJ was oddly cool about the whole discussion of how he needed to get back into school, any school, but he was all for moving.  The idea of a brother was less troubling than the idea of new parents.

"Older?  How much older?"

"Two years.  He's twelve, nearly thirteen."

"He's not going to boss me."

"He's going to try," Sam said, commiserating openly.

"He knows it's his right and his duty," Dean countered.  "Hey, hey, kiddo, no…"

TJ had started crying, and didn't stop for a long time, even when Dean held him and carried him around the property, from the porch to the pond and back.  Sam stayed with them both the entire time, even carrying TJ and whispering to him until he stopped crying.

***

"We cannot raise him ourselves," Dean said quietly after they'd got TJ to sleep.

"That's not what we were talking about," Sam said mysteriously.

"What did you tell him?"

"Something all little brothers need to know."

 

  


  
[ _**You Can't Go Back Again             Jacob Miller  
** _ ](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OXYFTZYM) [ _**This Year's Love              David Gray** _ ](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H33F52XO) [   
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OXYFTZYM)   


  


  


  
[   
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OXYFTZYM)

* * *

  



	7. FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 6. Epilogue

_  
**FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || 6. Epilogue**   
_   
**  
Epilogue  
**   
  
**  
**   
_Louisville, KY – November 18th, 2030_

The door swung open and there he was, the brother, twelve years old, the same sharp eyes but shorter, less rampant hair, Charley and Lena's lost son.

"We're here to see Mr. and Mrs. Jones again, Danny," Sam began. "Final meeting. Can you get them?"

"Right here!" interrupted a tall woman with a bright expression as she put her arm around the boy. "Danny, take TJ up and show him your new games. Your Dad and I need to talk to these men. Come in Mr. Samuelson, Mr. Salter," she said.

***

The conversation didn't last long. Dean restrained himself but still asked several times how Danny felt about having a brother all of a sudden.

"Well, he feels just fine. When we told him it was his biological brother, I mean, he's always known he was adopted, so it was just a small step to having a real brother."

"It's not a small step," Dean interjected, his tone just a bit angry, and Sam put his hand on Dean's leg, very briefly.

The surprise distracted him as Danny's father clarified, "Danny knows how to take care of his toys, his pets, and his responsibilities around this house. I think we all know it's not a small step, but we're ready for it."

"Are there any other questions we can answer?" Sam said in his best professional social worker voice.

"Well, this Samuelson fellow, the neighbor, he seems odd," asked Mrs. Jones. "We've never met him but the papers say he took care of TJ for nearly a year –"

"He _is_ a bit odd, but nothing inappropriate, just a guy who saw a chance to do the right thing," Sam explained blandly.

"Well, couldn't we meet him?" she insisted.

"He's moving on himself, asked us to keep contacts to a minimum. But based on our interviews, we have no concerns about his mental state," Dean explained. "I'd like to say goodbye, if you don't mind. Agent Salter, can you give the house one last check and sign off?" Dean asked, motioning in various directions as Sam tried to follow what he was asking.

"Yes. I'll check carefully," Sam nodded, finally getting what Dean had asked for. He left protective sigils at every window and door, and put his own W over the doorway where Dean's already stood guard.

***

"So, kiddo, you like your new brother?" Dean asked TJ out on the back porch.

"He taught me how to get out of the house without waking up his parents."

Dean looked worried, but it passed. "Already turning you against the old folks? Maybe he'll be a good brother after all."

"Can I tell him the Sam and Dean stories?"

"Sure. Just not… secret identities and all that."

"Will you come back?" TJ asked, soberly.

"Probably not for a while. But we'll see you. You figure out how to get out of the house, and when you hear the Impala, you come find us. We'll be just around the corner."

"Dean?" Sam asked quietly from the door.

"Bye, kiddo. No tears. Winchesters don't cry," Dean said, heading quickly for the front door.

Sam winked at TJ behind Dean's back. "He cries all the time. Give us a couple months to sort things out. He won't stay away long."

***

"You sure you're ready," Sam wondered aloud as they walked down the front steps.

"Got used to him is all," Dean said, his voice deep and trembling. "Now he thinks we're getting the band back together."

"Are we?" Sam asked.

"Farewell tour?"

"Those go on forever."

***

"Did you hear the noise that guy's car makes? Why does he drive such an old heap?" Danny asked.

"It's not like that at all. He said it saved their lives more than once," TJ answered, watching the car pull away.

"Is it true your folks died?" Danny asked, after a long silence in which the Impala's rumble died away in the winter haze.

"Yeah, they were killed," TJ said without elaborating. "They were your folks too, I guess."

"Somebody killed them? Doesn't that scare you?"

"Nope."

"How come?"

TJ wondered how much of his story he should tell. He decided to wait. "There's two brothers out there who keep us safe," was what he said instead. "And I met them once."

"What?" Danny replied in disbelief. "How do they protect us?"

"They save people and hunt the bad things. They keep you and me and everyone safe. They don’t always win, but they try."

"Some heroes," Danny said, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, well, you can shut your –"

"Danny? TJ? Come down to dinner."  
[  
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* * *

  
 _On the highway out of Louisville, Kentucky – November 18th, 2030_

Sam put on "that awful music," not surprised to find that Dean still hated it and said so. Dean wouldn't ask if Sam was sending him a message with the songs on his playlist, but he wondered. After a few more songs, he found a way to ask.

"Is that one about me? Because if it is, you should play _Ramblin' Man_ instead. At least people's ears will bleed in the good way."

Sam left his music playing as he drove, and watched the look on Dean's face, the exaggerated gesturing as he went on and on. He heard the old self-centered, set-in-his-ways brother he'd lost and found. But through it all, Dean's knee rested against Sam's, never moving.

Neither man was romantic; neither wanted traditional gestures – he just wanted his brother there. It wasn't about holding hands, which was too distractingly tactile for Dean, and for Sam too embarrassingly focused on unimportant things. What they each wanted was the sound and the warmth and the bond that flowed between when they were walking down a street or tied up in a cellar or sitting next to each other in the front seat of their car. They wanted the tall shape next to them that had always been there.

"All I'm saying, Sam, is, if we're going to drive all the way to Bobby's today, we could at least be together on the soundtrack."

"Are you driver, or shotgun?"  
[  
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THE END

  


* * *

  


  


coda

  


_Father_ is a loaded word. We were created by one man, raised by another. But the brothers in the black car were our fathers, too, at least as far as we're concerned. They kept us safe and kept us close. Our adopted mother called them our imaginary friends because she never saw them again after that last day. But they did visit us, many times: to take us to games, see us graduate from college, and often to give us "hunting lessons."

Once, they took us to a funeral for the man they'd known in South Dakota, and we watched them carefully as they burned his body, they and the five others who came to stand in silence. I wish we'd known that man better. They swore the day they left us here together fifty years ago that they would do for us as he had done -- to be family, come what may.

When we got older, we realized many things about them. We learned from Dean what he'd given up to save the world. We learned from Sam what the real cost of life was, the price of a soul. We learned, too, that they loved each other beyond all reason.

When they stopped coming, my brother and I were lost; there is no word that can encompass the passing of two fathers at once. Their angelic friend sent word soon after, that we should not despair. My brother and I took our new names that day, and found a way to make our mark on the world. A new family business.

Theodore Janus & Daniel Janus, _Distant Highway_ (2080)

  


[](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)

[   
_  
**Foreplay - Long Time Boston**   
_   
](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LKTSH2LP)   
[](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D)


	8. FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || Author's Notes

_**FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || Author's Notes** _   
**_DISTANT HIGHWAY_ \- AUTHOR'S NOTES**

* * *

  
  
**EVOLUTION**

This fic came from a title I'd set aside a long time ago – specifically two words from the song "Foreplay/Long Time" by Boston. It's a song that seemed to capture what Supernatural and Sam & Dean are about – and how we might hear them out on some distant highway, always moving on. I was surprised when I started imagining Sam and Dean as they might be, twenty years down the line - both by how they had split and how they rejoined.

I was even more surprised when the kid showed up in Dean's life, and in my story. He was never intended as a Sam-replacement for Dean, despite the similarities, but as a reminder of what Dean has in him to give to others, and what is needed of him, by the kid, and by the others in his life, and by "the world" in general. Sam matured a lot while working on his own, but not so much that he can't take a crazy left turn at middle age, especially now that he's driving the Impala and Dean's beside him. Bobby and Cas are here as well, mainly to slap some sense into the Winchesters.  
 ****

 **THEMES**

Like a lot of my longer fics, this is about the epic love story, and more to the point, about how it doesn't ever really end. I'm not sure if this is technically a Mary Sue, but it sure is wish fulfillment – not to be that kid, but just to know that the Winchesters are out there, rolling along a distant highway, forever. That they're keeping us safe, and that they're together. I think I'm trying to prepare myself for the day the show ends, to be honest. (Although as far as the show goes, I hope it ends differently than any of the ways I've written.)

Those looking for a porn fest will be sorely disappointed, and if you want romance, well, these aren't the right brothers. If you share the love of Sam and Dean's tortured, beautiful life together, I think you'll like this fic. It could easily have gotten longer, and I may return to it to do it justice, or to explore some of the intervening years and silent moments when they negotiated a new path together. And of course, they have two young brothers' lives to thoroughly mess up. ;)

Finally, a thank you to [](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/profile)[**keerawa**](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/)   for helping me focus on the idea of how Sam and Dean would _know_ the other had been in a place before - some sort of sign, invisible to others. I realized that a small mark would be best, and when I had the idea for Dean showing TJ the constellations, Orion (my favorite) led me to Cassiopeia, a "W"-shaped miracle that became one of the most powerful images in the story.

  
 **MONSTERS**

The monster in this book is based on three things, all of which creeped me out at various times in my life. The idea of a moldering person springs from what I hope was a nightmare but what memory tells me was a very real and very strange man I saw a few rows in front of us at a hockey game when I was very young, maybe seven. He turned and looked at me and smiled – and his teeth were grey and green and rotten.

The second idea of the threadlike form of the monster is based on the films "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," both the original 1956 classic and the 1978 remake, in particular the filament-like things that the pods use to suck the essence out of people and create their duplicates. The sight of fungal mycelium running through a body as it decays, bursting out of it to fruit - it gives me the serious willies every time.

But this was a mystery, not a horror story, really. Something lay at the heart of the creature - a longing that Lucifer had made real. I got a sense of real loneliness from Lucifer (as written and portrayed) and wondered what he might have done to stave off that ultimate horror. And where he might have gone wrong before he got demons to the way they are now.

The original idea for what lived under Red Hill came from Townes Van Zandt's amazing and chilling song, "The Hole" (included on the soundtrack for this story), a ballad about a seductive and deadly creature beneath the ground, and a man's escape from it by "embracing the god of love." Townes Van Zandt's songs are a major source of inspiration and appear multiple times on my BigBang soundtracks.

  


* * *

  



	9. FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || Soundtrack

_**FIC: "Distant Highway" || Sam/Dean FutureFic, R || Soundtrack**_  
 _  
_ ** _DISTANT HIGHWAY_ \- SOUNDTRACK**

[ **COMPLETE FILE**](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PP6H8K0I) 83MB @ MEGAUPLOAD

  


  


 **1\. INTRO**

 ****

  


  
[ ** _Don't Follow                Alice In Chains_**](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D6ZDKPYJ)

I've loved this song for ages. The sadly now deceased Lane Staley could sing like no one else, but for this song he stepped back and let Jerry Cantrell sing most of it. The lyrical connection is obvious, but the whole song weighs on the story.

  


[ ** _The Way                  Bonnie "Prince" Billy_**

 ** __**

](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WYFFQY9D%20%20%20%20)

  


B"P"B, _aka_ Will Oldham, is a unique musician in every sense, from his brilliant lyrics to his eclectic song style and use of voice. This is one of his more private songs and for me, it illuminates some of the obstacles that life presents to the Winchesters, as well as some that they raise themselves. Will Oldham's music appears on all three of my BigBang soundtracks. His discography is worth exploring.

 **2\. HOW THEY ENDED**

[ ** _These Days               Jackson Browne_**](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=XEWGRGBR)

 ** __**

  


This is Dean's song – Dean giving up, moving on; regret and fatigue and surface cool all rolled into one. More than anything, I think it speaks to his clear understanding of where he went wrong and just how far he's fallen.

  


[ _ **Sky Blue And Black               Jackson Browne**_

 ** __**

](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RHFRIHZQ)

  


This is Sam's song – moving on, mourning a death, as Jackson[Browne described it](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYGkC0NrS5E). There's an odd and persistent hope there, though, and his own huge share of guilt, loss, and a pride he just couldn't overcome.

 

  
 **3\. HOW IT BEGAN**

[ _ **Humming             Portishead**_](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DR7Y8JNZ)

  


  
This is the monster, strangely enough. To my disappointment, it turns out the opening sound is not a Theremin, but a digital synthesizer. In any event, I like the cheesy monster-movie atmosphere. The lyrics of longing and need meshed well with how I saw the creature and how seductive it was.

  


[ _ **Like A Stone              The Highway Sun Allstars**_](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JBXXGQGK)

  


  
Originally done by Audioslave, this cover version is just slightly better, _imho_ , and fits the tone of the story and the scenes it's paired with. This is Sam, entering a house he never thought he'd find, only to be sent to his knees by the power of memory.  
 

  
 **4\. HOW IT ENDED**

[ _ **The Hole               Townes Van Zandt**_](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WPMYZ809)

 ** __**

  


I cannot praise TVZ enough. His songs are genuine, troubling, beautiful, and intelligent. This cross between spoken word and song yields one of the creepiest ballads ever written, a true Appalachian horror story that had a strong influence on how I envisioned the monster. I'd love to see an episode of Supernatural get into local haunts like this. _Full lyrics below._  


  


[ _ **Between the Minds              Jack Savoretti**_

 ** __**

](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=SCE7LD74)

  


Another hat tip to[](http://wickedtruth.livejournal.com/profile)[ **wickedtruth**](http://wickedtruth.livejournal.com/)   for posting this song in her journal. I love how well it fits the characters of Sam and Dean, their unspoken communication that serves them so well, and their real inability to communicate clearly in words. Dean finds a way to reach Sam, or maybe Sam just knows him so well that Dean speaks to him anyway.

 **5\. HOW THEY BEGAN**

[ _ **You Can't Go Back Again            Jacob Miller**_](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OXYFTZYM)

 ** __**

  


This is a hard song to find; hopefully Miller will get more recognition. The ideas in this song were what dominated my thinking about how to resolve the dilemma that is Sam and Dean and hunting. It can't end and it can't continue, so what's left? You begin again and remake things in a different way. That's all very easy to say as a writer, but for the Winchesters, it takes a little pain, blood, and sacrifice.

  


[ _ **This Year's Love             David Gray**_

 ** __**

](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=H33F52XO)

  


To me there's a duality in the lyrics and the way he sings this song – is he truly certain it will work, or is he unable to believe it can last? I think the end of the story is ambiguous, so the song fits well with that mood.  
 

  
 **6\. EPILOGUE**

[ _ **Foreplay / Long Time               Boston**_](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=LKTSH2LP)

  


  
This is the song that started it all – the title comes from one of the early lines of "Long Time". It's both a return to the kind of music we got in S1 and a way for Dean to break out of what he's made of his life, leave behind a person who matters to him, and rejoin, after so long a separation, the one person he always loved.

[ **COMPLETE FILE**](http://www.megaupload.com/?d=PP6H8K0I) 83MB @ MEGAUPLOAD

  


* * *

  


  
[  
]()[ **MASTERPOST**](http://write-light.livejournal.com/228952.html) || **[Introduction](http://write-light.livejournal.com/228649.html)[  
]()** **[How They Ended](http://write-light.livejournal.com/228562.html)** || [ **How It Began**](http://write-light.livejournal.com/228194.html) [  
]()**[How It Ended](http://write-light.livejournal.com/227925.html)** || **[How They Began](http://write-light.livejournal.com/227593.html)** || **[Epilogue](http://write-light.livejournal.com/227342.html)**  
 **[Author's Notes](http://write-light.livejournal.com/226947.html)** || **[Soundtrack](http://write-light.livejournal.com/227203.html)**[  
]() **[Master Art Post](http://lightthesparks.livejournal.com/68872.html)**[]()  


* * *

  
  
_**The Hole**_ _ **–**_ _ **Townes Van Zandt**_

The old woman finally caught me  
Sneakin' through her cave  
Her hair looked just like barbwire, boys  
and her smile just like the grave  
She asked me could I stay awhile  
I said I believe I'd better go  
She slid her arm around my neck  
and sweetly whispered "no"  
It's cold and dark and lonely here  
as soon enough you'll see  
I'm oh so glad you stumbled in  
I've been cravin' company  
I cannot stay too long you know  
I left some friends at home  
She said Don't you fret about your friends  
Down here we're all alone  
I cannot leave my mother  
I can't leave her there to mourn  
You don't have to think about her  
Just forget you were ever born  
I'll disappoint my father  
you know he worked so hard for me  
If you have to pay your father back  
Just send him some misery  
I'll miss, I said, a girl I know  
I can't just leave there to pine  
Oh, she's got plenty of men to go  
I'm sure she'll do just fine  
What about my little boy  
She said, he's just like you  
Let a few short years roll by  
He'll end up down here too  
Then her pale green eyes began to glow  
she placed her hand on mine  
she smiled and said don't worry  
you'll get used to me in time  
As her cold tongue flickered toward my throat  
I spun myself around  
made a dive for the passageway  
but the walls come tumblin' down  
Now her eyes were the only light  
my fevered brain could see  
but I tore myself away from them  
and fell down to my knees  
I've come too far, I can't get back  
I beseeched all the Gods of men  
Well fame and fortune just laughed at me  
then silence once again  
Then a whisper deep within  
"embrace the God of Love"  
I lifted my face and through the tears  
I saw light fall from above  
I hurled myself into the wall  
I ripped and clawed my way  
through the stinkin', clingin' loam  
back to the light of day  
I crawled out into the wind again  
the sky upon my face  
I heard the earth sigh patiently  
as it slid back into place  
Now I'm back among the ones I love  
I'm loved by them in turn  
and it's only on the darkest night  
that green-eyed memory burns  
So walk my friends, in the light of day  
don't go sneakin' 'round no holes  
there might be something down there  
wants to gobble up your soul


End file.
